Obama's misplaced anger

President Obama is reportedly "angry" about the lack of "credit" he's receiving from black leaders:

The president is reportedly angry that African-American leaders aren’t crediting him for his hard-bought achievements that will especially help communities of color, including health care reform, aid to cities, student aid and protecting Medicaid.

Wouldn't it be nice if he were as angry about high black unemployment numbers, staggering black teen unemployment rates, the breakdown of the black family, the grossly disproportionate abortion rate for black babies, et cetera? If he's worried about these terrible problems, he's pretty good at hiding it.

All he's offering black Americans is more welfare and dependence. And for that he wants credit.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Tuesday various & sundry

Poltico: "Is Rick Perry Dumb?" Michelle Malkin: "Compared to what?" Enjoy:



Yes indeed. H/t to Allahpundit, who is "already looking forward to Politico’s inevitable follow-up pieces, 'Is Rick Perry crazy?' and 'Is Rick Perry evil?'" (Related: I'm with stupid)

A good one from Victor Davis Hanson: A Vineyard Too Far:

First, Obama’s fiery rhetoric (“fat-cat bankers,” “corporate jets,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “redistributive change,” “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” etc.) has demonized the better off. Many successful liberal presidents do that, but they finesse the necessary fundraising and schmoozing with Wall Street zillionaires with tact and discretion. Bill Clinton was a past master at gluing a populist veneer atop his deep fascination with old money and hip celebrity. The Obamas are far clumsier in both their class-warfare boilerplate and their overt elite tastes, whose contradictions they apparently either miss or don’t much care about.

No doubt this August the presidential advisers, without a clue about life in Tulare or Des Moines, gave sycophantic pep talks to the Obamas not to listen to “right-wing talk radio” and just enjoy what they like to enjoy. Obama himself apparently is still confident that the media will always exempt his golfing in a way they never did Bush’s far less frequent putting. Michael Moore, after all, is not going to cut and paste a video clip of Obama on the fairway.

Read the rest.

This item from Mark Steyn will make your blood boil. There will be no reasoning with Big Brother's insensible, merciless boot if you happen to stumble into its path:

Such open-ended “laws” are an invitation to tyranny, and it would be expecting an awful lot for a money-no-object bureaucracy not to take advantage of it. For example:

Consider the recent experience of Pascal Vieillard, whose Atlanta-area company, A-440 Pianos, imported several antique Bösendorfers. Mr. Vieillard asked officials at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species how to fill out the correct paperwork—which simply encouraged them to alert U.S. Customs to give his shipment added scrutiny.

There was never any question that the instruments were old enough to have grandfathered ivory keys. But Mr. Vieillard didn’t have his paperwork straight when two-dozen federal agents came calling.

Two dozen federal agents? To raid a piano importer? Does the piano industry have a particular reputation for violent armed resistance? Or is it that the most footling bureaucrat now feels he has no credibility unless he’s got his own elite commando team?

If that last bit sounds hyperbolic, see this recent item.

Back to the pianos. "There was never any question" that they didn't violate any regulations. But that wasn't enough to prevent two dozen federal agents from descending upon Mr. Vieillard, radically disrupting his life and business, threatening him with years of jail time, and ultimately punishing him to the tune of a $17,500 fine and three years probation. Because his papers weren't in order. That's tyranny. Read the rest.

That's all for now. More good stuff in the sidebar.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Video: Steyn on Newsnight

Steen? Steyn? Let's call the whole thing off:



I'm not sure whether to file that under "deliberately obtuse" or "invincibly ignorant." Did she even read the book?

For a more intelligent and satisfying treatment of After America listen to Mark's talk with Milt Rosenberg. It's two hours long but well worth the time. I just finished listening to it in the car. Now I'm going to go back into the Extension 720 archives and dig out some older Steyn interviews. This one from March is highly recommended.


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

I'm with stupid

Here's a fun headline from Politico: Is Rick Perry Dumb? By the article's end, the answer seems to be no, not really (though the implication in the headline is meant to linger in readers' minds). But the type of intelligence he's credited with is rather suspect:

His policy focus as governor hasn’t been complex – it’s almost entirely jobs and business-focused – but that’s not where Perry’s mind is, say those who know him.

He’s a power politician and very canny one. And what seems to animate him is competition.

My emphasis. Considering the state of the US economy, you might view Perry's actual laser-like focus on jobs and business as a feature, not a bug. But according to Jonathan Martin, what's really behind the "ferociously single-minded" governor is a strong desire to compete and win. How vulgar. Winning and "victory" are so pre-Hope-n-Change.

Important reminder from Russ Vaughn of the American Thinker: "The Air Force doesn't hire and train dummies to fly its planes."

As with fighter pilots, the United States Air Force does not entrust a very, very expensive aircraft and the lives of up to 64 highly-trained paratroopers to a moron. In fact, if anything, the Air Force places more trust in those who fly troops like me into high-risk combat situations, a fact for which I am eternally grateful. So, once again, I am forced to point out to those wussies on the left that morons do not become military pilots. In fact, acceptance into and completion of a military flight training program is de facto proof of higher intelligence and above average decision-making skills, Not only did Rick Perry show the Air Force he had the right stuff, he has continued to demonstrate it throughout his political career with the same kind of smart, calm decision-making that made him the trusted custodian of a plane full of paratroopers.

A pilot's competence can be measured quite easily. The skills of a student with no transcripts, a community agitator, a law instructor, a do-nothing state senator, or a do-nothing US senator, are harder to evaluate. Has Obama ever succeeded at anything, besides getting elected?

Which brings us to that other Perry resume item, Governor of Texas. Who's smarter, the guy who has effectively run one of the US's largest states for ten years (though he's "not a thinker"), or the credentialed empty suit who is running the US economy over a cliff?

I'll stick with the "dumb" guy.

Along those lines: Early Obama Letter Confirms Inability to Write


Linked at MichelleMalkin.com. Thanks!

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Still waiting for those "weekly" new ideas on jobs from President Obama

August 11, 2011:

President Obama "sought to reassert economic leadership" by pledging to deliver new ideas every week to create jobs, Reuters reports. 

It's been two and half weeks. That means he's at least two new ideas behind. I'm beginning to think he wasn't serious.


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Two from the Anchoress

We're on the eastern edge of the outer band of Irene so beyond losing another 5-10% of our roof shingles I don't think we'll suffer much. (Though I am a little concerned about where my neighbor's trampoline may wind up.)

 
Maximum winds during the duration of Irene.

But if you're more in the direct path, check out Elizabeth Scalia's very helpful suggestions. (And she's right about the cookies, you know.)

While you're there, read this. Unreal:

But now — understanding all of that — we read that New York City’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg is not inviting First Responders to observe the tenth anniversary of this day of death and sacrifice, at Ground Zero.

And we read, also that Mayor Bloomberg’s guest list is empty of any clergy, as well.

There will be no prayers at his little shindig. Heaven, forbid.

Apparently, there’s just not enough room for all the First Responders who want to be there, because there are so many important people who must be there! They cannot be denied their photo-op, and their speechifying, and their postures and poses, even though most of them were not even in office on that dreadful day.

No, Michael Bloomberg’s Super Colossal, Low-Salt 9/11 Memorial and Networking Event is a big-ticket item for the the ones who can be tapped, later, for their money or their influence — the most important sorts of people.
And of course, some of the families of the dead will be allowed in. One does need them for the pictures, after all.

First Responders and Clergyfolk are not very important to the powerful and the enlightened. They only protect us, rescue us, resuscitate us, console us, pray with us, bless us and bury us. And when they die doing it, well, one does feel terrible about it for a whole news cycle or two. And then one takes a private jet somewhere, and tries to forget…

I don’t know why I should be surprised. Priests and First Responders are, like our troops, front-line folk. They’re like heroes in the cowboy flicks; they ride in, shoulder the burden, help put things to rights, and then — while the elite get on with assuming their power and asserting their primacy –they recede into the background. Only the very few stick around to say ‘thank you’ and wave them off. Sometimes children ask them to come back, or to stay.

Read the whole thing.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Under water

Hurricane Irene seems headed this way but DC and Alexandria residents are sitting pretty, thanks to their Depts. of Public Works, which have allotted each household five -- count 'em -- five free sandbags. So bring it on, Irene!

You may wonder, as I have, how much difference five sandbags can make, but residents line up for their free allotment of sand every time floods threaten. Earlier this month, in anticipation of heavy rain, people stood in the sandbag line for hours:

Eric Goldstein, who was waiting for sandbags, told us, "It's a pretty basic commodity. To not have it like this is pretty frustrating."

In each case, drivers had to wait about 30 minutes for a dump trunk to arrive with more bags that you would have thought were filled with gold based on the length of the line.

And if the five sandbags fail to hold back the flood, maybe this will be the moment when Barack Obama will choose to use his magic to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet and all that. Or perhaps he's planning to influence the hurricane as he has the stock market, or downgrade it as he has the country's credit rating. Stay tuned to see which superpower he'll employ: Obama to address hurricane from Martha's Vineyard.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

And then they came for the Spiderman lunchboxes

I never thought I'd see the day. Kids' cartoon-themed lunchboxes are out? As a homeschooler and cultural dropout, I wouldn't have known. But non-dropout Petula Dvorak testifies that DC area public school nannies do not approve of the use of such containers. And even Ms. Dvorak, no critic of the school-knows-best culture, seems a little surprised. In fact, schools are micromanaging not only what's in and on kids' lunchboxes, but every other detail that goes into the preparation (and clean up!) of a non-school lunch. Dvorak:

The lunchbox itself can be fraught with peril. Anything commercial is bad, bad, bad. Spider-Man? Hannah Montana? Clone Wars? Totally out. Might as well call social services.

If a school doesn’t want to outright ban such things, the teacher gently suggests “non-violent” themes (good luck if you’ve got a boy) or urges you to “Think outside the box!” when selecting kids’ gear.

I made this apparently huge faux pas with my older son’s first lunchbox, a Buzz Lightyear model that was singularly garish amid the neat row of noncommercial, whimsical containers from L.L. Bean and Hanna Andersson.

Buzz’s smiling endorsement of the Disney mega-machine cost me $8 at Toys R Us. Meanwhile, the simplicity of a caterpillar, antique robot or whimsical zoo scene costs more than a fancy downtown lunch.

When we bought our lunchboxes this year (nonlicensed, generic robots at Target — win!), I realized that there was a whole host of other things I was supposed to be afraid of.

“Ultra Safe! PVC Free! Worry free!” read the label hanging from the robot’s ear, assuring me that there is also no lead to be found in the squishy lunch bag. Really? I thought all I had to fear was the other parents. I totally forgot to worry about the physical, not just psychological, harm that Buzz was inflicting on my child.

As for what’s inside the lunchbox? Schools want you to save the environment (and cut down on their trash), so they ask you to package everything in separate, reusable containers.

When you also follow their guidelines on providing one food of every group and every color, that means you have about eight pieces of plastic to wash every night. Wait, I have two kids. So that’s 16.

Oh, and by the way, at least one school in Montgomery County asks you to hand wash all those tiny Tupperwares, rather than use the dishwasher. So as not to release any carcinogenic BPAs from the plastic, of course.

Got that? Some government schools now believe it's their job to tell families how to wash their dishes.

I had one of these (or something very like it) back in 1964 or so. It was vinyl. I can't remember whether my sister had red and I had blue or vice versa, but we thought they were pretty awesome.

***

Update, August 28, 2011: More of the same, NYT via Andrew Stuttaford:

“Ziplocs are the biggest misstep,” said Julie Corbett, a mother in Oakland, Calif., whose two girls attend a school with an eco-friendly lunch policy. In school years past, she said, many a morning came unhinged when the girls were sent to school with disposable sandwich bags.

“That’s when the kids have meltdowns, because they don’t want to be shamed at school,” Ms. Corbett said. “It’s a big deal.”

Stuttaford: "Yes, it's a religion."

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

What the left fully understands

George Neumayr: They do "fully understand":

Joe Biden​ can always be counted on to blurt out the true views of the left and didn't disappoint when asked about China's one-child policy. "Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I am not second-guessing -- of one child per family," said Biden during a university visit in Chengdu. Biden went on to criticize the policy, but only on utilitarian grounds, saying that "you're in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people," which is "not sustainable."

Biden's office has now revised and extended his remark. "The Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China's coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization," said Biden spokeswoman Kendra Barkoff. "The vice president believes such practices are repugnant."

From "I fully understand" the practice to considering it "repugnant" would seem to require more of an explanation. What makes it repugnant? That it involves poor planning for the care of seniors? The truth is that the left does "fully understand" the policy, especially since it played such a large role in spreading overpopulation fears to China in the 1970s that gave rise to the policy. Even today members of the Planned Parenthood crowd support China's one-child policy.

Please read the rest.

Have another culture of death story. The more naive among us might think this would go without saying, but we'd be wrong:

Assisted Living Facilities Should Not be Forced to Allow Self Starvation Suicide

Wesley Smith:

We are getting to the place in which assisted living and similar facilities that do not wish such deaths taking place on their premises may have to publicly declare themselves “suicide free zones,” and let all residents know that all such attempts will be grounds for calling 911 and/or eviction.  What a sorry world in which we live, and assisted suicide groups like Compassion and Choices–which was involved here–are very much to blame.

Bonus link from Secondhand Smoke: Utilitarian Moral Views Linked to Psychopathology! In which researchers don't get the results they're looking for:

Note the puzzlement.  I mean researchers have agreed that utilitarianism is the appropriate framework for making moral judgments! But the study shows such believers “possess a set of psychological characteristics that many would consider to be prototypically immoral!” That can’t be right. We need to find out why this counter intuitive result happened.  More grant money, please.

Next post will be something very cheerful and uplifting, I promise.

Linked by Larwin -- thanks!
Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

They don't want to grow up

And they don't want their kids to grow up, either.

Christopher Orlet delivers a gem of a piece on the rise of the perpetual adolescent:

This stands on its head the manners and mores of my grandfather's time. Once grown men and women were chastised if they behaved like children, or refused to take on the responsibilities associated with adulthood. Today it is the men and women who undertake careers, marry, and start families in their twenties whose behavior is called into question. Why would anyone put himself in such a position when you can live a little first?

Living a little, means, among other things, playing kickball.

In a way, this is understandable. Adulthood is, after all, a grim time. It is a time of duties, drudgery, and divorce. Or so the thinking goes. How much better it is to remain a permanent adolescent. Perhaps not biologically, but emotionally.

TRUTH BE TOLD, kickball alone isn't much fun, not even for the participants. That's why most of us lost interest by fifth grade. And that's why when adults play kickball there is always plenty of beer and vulgarity on tap.

Read the whole thing. Along those lines, see my Adulthood undermined, in which I note the same phenomenon. Please excuse me for quoting myself but it's strictly pertinent to Orlet's thesis:

How many parents today actually want their sons to become full-fledged adults at age 21 or 22, working full-time, getting married and starting families? Not many, I'll wager. But it was different forty years ago:

Last year Vanessa Wight, of Columbia University, used data from the U.S. Current Population Survey to show how young people are increasingly delaying marriage.

In 1970, the median age for a first marriage was 20.8 for women and 23.2 for men. It is now 25.9 for women and 28.1 for men.

She said: 'Some research suggests that the notion of adulthood is changing and that marriage and parenthood, once the hallmarks of adult status, are no longer as important to defining a successful transition to adulthood.'

It was the cultural norm back then, but now a young couple who marries at the median ages of 1970 raises eyebrows among the older generation. These same adults wouldn't bat an eye upon hearing that the "kids" have decided to move in together but are taken aback at the mention of wedding bells. They may be vaguely uncomfortable with the video-game-addicted, do-nothing, go-slowly-with-the-flow "coffee culture" (described here by Mark Steyn), but it doesn't scare them nearly as much as the idea of their sons and daughters taking on the responsibilities of marriage and family before they're "ready."

Values play a role in this, of course. Kids raised with post-sexual-revolution values won't see much point in getting married. Serial relationships, co-habitation, and contraceptives are the norm for them. Marriage is a quaint custom if you like that sort of thing but it's no longer a prerequisite for sharing one's life with another or even for bringing new lives into the world. The key to the whole "Why Johnny Won't Grow Up" puzzle may be this: the permanent commitment of traditional marriage isn't only irrelevant to most young adults; it's not embraced by their parents, either.

When the institution of marriage was strong and vital, perhaps it was a force which propelled young men into adulthood. Now that marriage is largely superfluous, it follows that adulthood is, too.

Back to Mr. Orlet. I won't reproduce his description of the puerile vulgarity of his local kickball league. But just after it, he writes:

A moment's reflection, however, makes plain that the issue is more than kickball. Indeed, kickball is just another symptom of the on-going depreciation of adulthood, that 40-year cultural shift of tectonic proportions that has been steadily obliterating the line between adolescence and adulthood.

What's more, it's an example of the continuing vulgarization of society spurred by a self-esteem generation brought up to believe everything they do merits praise. The young vulgarians believe their raunchy, drunken antics deserve the same attention they received when daddy filmed their first time on the potty.

You can't give what you don't have, practice, or believe. Parents who'd rather be tweens (in the worst sense -- no offense, kids!) aren't likely to produce offspring who will grow into responsible adults, are they?

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Boehner urges Obama to take a stand against China's one-child policy

Kathryn Jean Lopez reminds us that Speaker of the House John Boehner, in stark contrast to the Secretary of State, the President, and most notably, the Vice President, has in fact condemned China's depraved one-child policy. He did so in January when the Chinese president came to town and President Obama saw fit to honor the dictator with a lavish state dinner. From a Boehner press release:

“And finally, we raised our strong, ongoing concerns with reports of human rights violations in China, including the denial of religious freedom, and the use of coercive abortion as a consequence of the ‘one child’ policy. When it comes to guaranteeing the freedom and dignity of all her citizens, including and especially the unborn, Chinese leaders have a responsibility to do better, and the United States has a responsibility to hold them to account.”

Today, Speaker Boehner urges the administration to counteract VP Biden's acceptance of China's appalling practices with some real condemnation, and action:

It’s welcome news that a White House spokesman has clarified that the Vice President opposes China’s repugnant “one-child” policy, as Speaker Boehner said Monday he hoped the White House would. But now that such a clarification has been offered, the Obama administration needs to back its backpedaling with action.

There are two things the Obama administration can do immediately on this front. One is for the Vice President himself – the individual who holds the office, and who uttered the damaging comments Sunday – to publicly state the new words his staff has used. The other is for President Obama to announce the United States will stop contributing money to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which supports China and has been linked to implementation of the one-child policy. Until the administration takes these actions, the clarification issued by the Vice President’s spokesman Tuesday will ring hollow.

Why is it important for the Vice President himself to address the issue? The fact is that the Vice President of the United States traveled to China and said, with the eyes of that nation’s leaders upon him, that he “fully understands” the one-child policy and “isn’t second-guessing” it. It is reasonable for the leaders of China’s government to assume that when the Vice President of the United States speaks in an official setting on an official trip overseas, he speaks for the Obama Administration and the government of the United States. It is also reasonable for them to assume that when the Vice President of the United States says something, he means what he says. It’s also a good bet the leaders of China’s government are not scrutinizing U.S. media outlets for comments made by a White House staffer in response to questions from the media, or putting a great deal of stock in such a staffer’s comments even if they have noticed them.

If the Obama Administration truly opposes the one-child policy and truly cares about undoing the damage the Vice President’s comments have caused, the Vice President himself – or his boss, the President of the United States – should personally go on record immediately and unequivocally right the wrong.

Secondly, if the Obama administration is serious about its opposition to the one-child policy, the President should immediately halt U.S. contributions to the U.N. Population Fund, which has been linked in China to the one-child policy. President George W. Bush stopped U.S. contributions to the UNFPA in 2002, but they were resumed by President Obama when he took office in 2009, on the grounds that the fund doesn’t “directly” support abortion.

Until these two basic actions have been taken, the effect of the Biden incident is that the perpetrators of the one-child policy – the people with the power and authority to reverse it, and end the forced sterilizations and coercive abortions the policy has spawned – have been given further reason to believe that the United States government does not object to the one-child policy and doesn’t mind if it continues. They have been left with the impression that while some American leaders strenuously object to the policy – such as Speaker Boehner, who raised concerns about the one-child policy directly to Chinese President Hu Jintao in a meeting earlier this year – there are other American leaders, including the Vice President and President of the United States, who are willing to offer a wink and a nod, and let the Chinese government simply carry on with its reprehensible business.

By issuing a clarification through a spokesman, the White House has checked a political box on this side of the Pacific. Now the President and Vice President will show the world where their administration really stands by their actions.

My emphasis added. Literally, they do not object. That's the problem.

Also see Reggie Littlejohn:

Chastened, Biden now says that China’s coercive population-control program is “repugnant.” Indeed, his spokeswoman insists that the entire “Obama administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization.

Words spoken before the world in an official capacity cannot be unspoken. The bell, once rung, cannot be un-rung.

However, the Obama administration now has publicly admitted it knows that China practices forced abortion and sterilization. This is progress.

Should we believe that this administration “strongly opposes” these practices?

If the Obama administration “strongly opposes” forced abortion in China, then why did they restore funding to UNFPA (United Nations Family Planning Fund), an operative “abortion provider” in China? In 2001, the U.S. cut funding to UNFPA because an investigation, headed by then–Secretary of State Colin Powell, found that UNFPA was complicit in the coercive implementation of China’s one-child policy. In 2008, the U.S. State Department reaffirmed that determination, and yet the Obama administration resumed funding in 2009. President Obama’s FY 2012 budget requests $47 million for UNFPA.

The current administration also funds the International Planned Parenthood Federation. The IPPF works hand in hand with the coercive Chinese Communist population-control machine. Their website declares, “The China Family Planning Association (CFPA) plays a very important role in China’s family planning programme. It supports the present family planning policy of the government . . .”

Read the rest.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

White House says Biden doesn't really "fully understand" forced abortions, sterilizations, and infanticide after all

Which is a comfort, I guess:

The Obama Administration strongly opposes all aspects of China’s coercive birth limitation policies, including forced abortion and sterilization. The Vice President believes such practices are repugnant. 

Unfortunately, neither he nor anyone else in the administration will say that to the Chinese. Via Hot Air: When Biden said he “fully understands” China’s one-child policy, he totally meant the opposite. Allahpundit comments:

If China’s willing to thin the herd on the front end, who knows? Maybe they’ll start thinning it on the back end too to bring the grandchild/grandparent ratio into line. If you think rationing of health care to seniors is a frightening concept in the U.S. and UK, wait until the ChiComs put their distinctive brand on it.

Allahpundit calls this a "grim joke" but it strikes me more as a perfectly plausible eventuality. What's to prevent it? Respect for life and liberty?

Mark Steyn:

Nevertheless, we owe ‘em a ton of money. Which means you can figure for yourself the likelihood of an American vice-president standing up in public and expressing his repugnance at the wholesale slaughter of China’s baby girls. A few lines before the passage above, I quote Jonathan Swift’s “Run Upon The Bankers”: “They have his soul, who have his bonds.” China has our bonds, and thus in a certain sense they have our soul. Or at any rate Joe Biden’s. The big theme of my book’s prologue is that it starts with the money but it never stops there. For three decades, US foreign policy “realists” have assured us that China’s economic liberalization would inevitably lead to political liberalization. As Biden’s wretched remarks suggest, the inverse was always more likely: the reality of China’s economic dominance is western acquiescence in its repulsive politics.

Read the rest.

Charles Krauthammer weighs in:


Previous post: Biden's sympathy for the devil: He "fully understands" China's one-child policy

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Twits

Critical thinking was on parade this afternoon as rumors flew that the Washington Monument is now visibly leaning after the DC quake:

The Washington Monument is supposibly leaning

Washington Monument is really now leaning? Will it stay like that now? Like the one in Italy

THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT IS LEANING BCUZ OF THAT QUAKE!! DAYUUUUUUUUM

Why don't they just shut down DC already? Traffic is worse then usual and the Washington Monument and the National Cathedral are tilting.

NOOOOOO! They said the Washington Monument is tilting. D: Like, I love that thing. How it looks in the reflecting pool.. IT CANT FALL.

Reports suggesting the Washington Monument was shaking so much today it looked as if it were made a rubber.

Etc. The rumors may have started with this report from FOX:

Marine helicopters were seen hovering above the D.C, and there were reports that the Washington Monument may be tilting.

But it isn't. At least not so anyone can tell. It could have been unsettled, I suppose, but it wasn't. Maybe FOX should have sent someone over there to eyeball it before going with that. Though, for the record, they did say "may be tilting."

***

Updated with heart-rending, hair-raising tales from young survivors. Suburbia will never be the same.


***

Linked by Michelle Malkin. Thank you!

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Getting there: -26 Approval Index

Maybe Mr. Rasmussen should change the name to "disapproval index." Obama has been underwater on this for a long, long time. But today he hits a new low: 19% strongly approve, 45% strongly disapprove. The graphic isn't up yet for today but the numbers are in the trend chart, here.

Even this he blames on someone else: Congress did it!

What they’re frustrated right now is they want me to be able to wrangle Congress and get them moving. And you know, we’ve got this thing, separation of powers, and we don’t have a parliamentary system. And it means that there are times where Congress is gonna do things despite what I say as opposed to because I think this is the right direction for the country.

As usual, he laments his lack of absolute power and blames someone else for his failures. So at least he's consistent.

***

Here's the graphic:

Q: Why so high?
A: Imagine where it would be if the liberal media demonized him they way they did his predecessor.

***

Bonus! The unkindest cut of all, via Gallup: Obama Only Two Points Ahead of Ron Paul

Or worse.

***

Linked at CMR -- thanks!
Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

If only

Quin Hillyer has a dream: If Only Obama Would Abdicate

This boringly ineffective would-be demagogue in the Oval Office keeps trotting out the same tired, petty, counterfactual lines in every one of his pompous, detached-from-reality speeches -- and he did so again in his Saturday radio address. So shopworn is his refrain, and so counterproductive are his policies (both enacted and proposed), that the markets tank just about every time he opens his mouth, and the economy suffers with each minute he continues to occupy the White House. His resignation from office, in abject embarrassment at his failures, would be a great first step toward economic recovery, not to mention a balm to the souls of tens of millions of Americans sick of his condescension, his prevarications, and his incompetence.

Of course this man's ego won't let him resign, but just think: Vice President Joe Biden, for all his blarney, is a naturally ebullient "people person," a dealmaker, and more a conventional liberal politician than an ideologue. If he ascended to the presidency, the markets would immediately take heart that some sort of rough progress could be fashioned despite Washington's bitter divide. His tone alone would improve the confidence of both consumers and investors and help unleash the "animal spirits" that are necessary for an economy to grow.

Let Barack The One Obama take his hectoring lecturing back to some university classroom somewhere, while the rest of us get about the business of reviving the country we so love. Ahh, we can only wish….

That aforementioned radio address, so beneath what should be the tone and message of an American president that it was downright tawdry, bears some analysis to demonstrate just how far this man has sunk.

Read the rest. That Joe "I fully understand" Biden, whose resume of badness is mighty hard to beat, could be considered a step up from King Barack is a testament to the god-awfulness of his reign thus far.

Related, from last month: I'll give the Obamessiah credit for one miracle: His narcissism and petulance have made Joe Biden look like a reasonable man. Impressive.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Biden's sympathy for the devil: He "fully understands" China's one-child policy

This is beyond shameful. Biden in China:

Your policy has been one which I fully understand — I’m not second-guessing — of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

So just kill off the old people, too. What's the problem?

Kathryn Jean Lopez:

Forced abortion. Fully understandable, in the words of our Scranton-born, rosary-clutching vice president?

John Boehner:

I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state. I hope and trust that the Vice President didn’t actually say what has been reported, and that a correction or clarification from the White House will be forthcoming. The Obama administration should be focusing on jobs for the American people, not encouraging foreign governments to utilize abortion as a means of population and deficit control.

Rather than condemning China's depraved "family planning" policies, as any self-respecting, free, humane nation would, Biden seems to be expressing solidarity with our financial overlords. Steyn, in his excellent new book, makes much of Swift's observation, "They have his soul, who have his bonds." This has implications beyond the economic.

China's one child policy means babies are thrown away like garbage, or worse. From a previous post:

That has been the exact fate of countless female babies born in China. Xinran's Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother documents the horrors of the Chinese culture of death, in which not only the state but sometimes even parents see their babies as offal to be literally thrown to the dogs. Jonathan Mirsky wrote about the book last year:

No bleaker picture exists of the fate of Chinese female infants, whether murdered at birth or abandoned, than Messages from an Unknown Chinese Mother. One woman’s story reveals this black mark in Chinese culture, both traditional and contemporary. She had lived and worked almost her entire life in orphanages, and told Xinran that little girls sometimes arrived there with scars between their legs. Oil lamps or candles had burned them.
The first thing the village midwives did when the baby was born was not to clear its airway but to check [by the light of the lamp or candle] whether it was a boy or girl, because that was what the family wanted to hear. Some of the burns were on the baby’s private parts …  [. . .]

Mother love is supposed to be such a great thing, but so many babies are abandoned, and it’s their mothers who do it. They’re ignorant. They feel differently about emotions from the way you do. Where I come from, people talk about smothering a baby girl or just throwing it[!]into a stream … to be eaten by dogs, as if it were a joke. How much do you think these women loved their babies?

Other mothers suffer endlessly at the loss of their daughters: 

Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity... these women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them -- on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages or on station platforms -- and others even had to watch their baby daughters being taken away at birth, and drowned.

See Allahpundit for more soul-sickening anecdotes.

***

Edited to correct Swift quotation.

***

Linked at MichelleMalkin.com -- many thanks.
Many thanks also to Doug Ross.

***

Many thanks to Mark Steyn for linking. Welcome, Corner readers!

***

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Rep. Maxine Waters invites Tea Party over to her place

As the song says, the devil ain't lazy. Maxine Waters, unleashed:

"As far as I'm concerned, the Tea Party can go straight to hell!"

Note the purple shirted goons cheering in foreground.

Liberal media is ignoring this as it doesn't quite fit their civility narrative.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Music break: I Only Have Eyes For You

by Harry Warren and Al Dubin, 1934



 Have another:




Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Wanted: Candidate willing to forgo the perks

Husband did some pretty funny shtick the other day on the imperial presidency's bus tour, featuring Obama as the Marquis St. Evrémonde, idly inquiring about the origin of that annoying bump under the wheels of the royal bus as it careened through bitter-clinger land. Unfortunately, I can't recreate it for you here, so you'll have to settle for Mark Steyn, writing on "the increasingly and revoltingly unrepublican lifestyle of the American president":

Why exactly does the president need a 40-car escort to drive past his subjects in Dead Moose Junction? It doesn't communicate strength, but only waste, and decadence. [. . .]

I wish Gov. Perry well in his stated goal of banishing Washington to the periphery of Americans' lives. One way he could set the tone is by foregoing much of the waste and excess that attends the imperial presidency.

If only. Wouldn't it be something to have a president who, along with his spouse, eschewed the royal perks, restrained himself on travel (for which, apparently, presidents are given a blank check), including out-of-town date nights, traffic-crippling fund-raisers, ridiculous twenty-four vehicle motorcade lunches, and rich-and-famous vacations that require the support of millions of taxpayer dollars for security and transportation?

Is there a candidate out there who is willing to view the presidency as something akin to military service, or even to the Peace Corps, as an obligation that will require personal sacrifice, to the point of [gasp] giving up dinners out? How many chefs would be enough to induce the first couple to stay home and let others live in peace? Who are they, really, to shut down cities and beaches to gratify their own personal desires? We need to grab our pitchforks (for the deliberately obtuse, that's a metaphor) and start complaining about this. Security is one thing; decadence and abuse of office is quite another. I quoted a less than gruntled Colbert King last week on the luxurious digs and perks we've bestowed upon our presidents:

Without leaving the White House grounds, they have access to five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a jogging trail, a putting green and a movie theater that shows first-run films on demand. That’s hardly roughing it.

And if the president ever feels the need to get away, let’s say to seek a little solitude and tranquility beyond the confines of hot and humid Washington, the American taxpayers have thoughtfully provided a secluded country residence for the first family’s exclusive use in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park. It’s called Camp David. A hardship post it is not.

Camp David comes equipped with 24-hour guard service, including fighter jets, to keep gawkers and riff-raff out of sight. For presidential enjoyment, Camp David’s wooded mountaintop has a swimming pool, a sauna, tennis courts, a bowling alley, a trout stream and movie facilities, again with first-run features on demand.

But it's not enough. Of course we've done this to ourselves, allowing our "representatives" to vote themselves all manner of luxuries, to a level of excess which, as Steyn points out, out-royals the royals.

So how about it? Is there a candidate out there willing to take a "no conga-line" pledge?

Meanwhile, back at the Vineyard:

(photo: Reuters)

I'm not sure whether this is Mrs. Obama's Martha's Vineyard motorcade or the president's. Presumably there were two, his and hers, since the first couple flew in separately, thereby insouciantly doubling the expense of their travel.

That's our money they're spending. But they don't see it that way. More from Mark Steyn:

When you're the presiding genius of the Brokest Nation in History, enjoying the lifestyle of the super-rich while allegedly in "public service" sends a strikingly Latin American message.

And Jim Picht, writing in the Washington Times, picks up the same kind of vibe:

In our racial climate it would be so much easier to state the obvious if Obama were white: This administration looks more and more like one of those African cesspools run by a self-obsessed tribal leader. It runs more like a cozy group of cronies than an open and honest administration, and it's increasingly divorced from American reality. Even Maxine Waters has noticed.

It's one thing to take some down time at Camp David, quite another to run off at every opportunity to luxurious hotels and estates with a retinue of hundreds. This is an administration that enjoys the perks of the American Presidency in an imperial fashion at a time when it's in bad taste, just as leaders of African cesspools don't let the misery of the masses get in the way of their fun. It doesn't take governance seriously, treating policy more like performance art than like a sacred trust.

If the President and his family need down time, let them enjoy the excellent theatre in the house we've provided them. Let them invite friends over to grill at Camp David. Let them visit some of the vast expanse of this nation that lies between New England and California. And let the President treat his job as the sacred trust that it is, and not as an endless string of perks.

Victor Davis Hanson offered the Obamas a similar vacation tip but that's not their style. These are people who wear $500 sneakers to the food bank and $200 T-shirts to paint a wall on "service day." I hope and pray we can do better next time.

***

Many thanks to Mark Steyn who has linked to us in a Corner post which you must read.

***

Linked by Larwyn -- many thanks!

***

Also linked by Betsy -- thanks very much!


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Video: Ingraham crushes Rangel

It's a little early for popcorn but get comfy and enjoy:



Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Shoring up the base

Before the president left for ten days of celebrity schmoozing and seaside golfing quality time with his family, he checked off a couple of items on his to-do list:

1.) Make it up to hispanic voters, legal or not: 

Bowing to pressure from immigrant rights activists, the Obama administration said Thursday that it will halt deportation proceedings on a case-by-case basis against illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria, such as attending school, having family in the military or having primary responsible for other family members’ care.

The move marks a major step for President Obama, who for months has said he does not have broad categorical authority to halt deportations and said he must follow the laws as Congress has written them.

But in letters to Congress on Thursday, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said she does have discretion to focus on “priorities” and that her department and the Justice Department will review all ongoing cases to see who meets the new criteria.

“This case-by-case approach will enhance public safety,” she said. “Immigration judges will be able to more swiftly adjudicate high-priority cases, such as those involving convicted felons.”

The move won immediate praise from Hispanic activists and Democrats who had strenuously argued with the administration that it did have authority to take these actions, and said as long as Congress is deadlocked on the issue, it was up to Mr. Obama to act.

He's going to need those votes.

2.) By executive order, promote "diversity and inclusion" in the bloated-to-bursting federal workforce:

The order creates a council of deputy agency chiefs and federal workers tasked with developing a government-wide plan to improve diversity in recruitment, training and promotion of federal workers. The plan is due within 90 days, and each federal agency has been tasked with developing its own guidelines within 120 days after that.

“The federal government has a special opportunity to lead by example,” John Berry, director of the Office of Personnel Management, said in a conference call.

The plans are expected to include accountability measures that will ensure agencies prioritize diversity — something Berry hopes will enable this effort to succeed where others have failed. According to the OPM, minorities represented 38.8 percent of the federal workforce last year, while 43.9 percent of the federal workforce was female.

Michael Walsh:

Yes, you know that monolithically white-male federal government that systemically denies opportunities to women and persons of color.

I couldn't find the words "merit," "qualified," or "excellence" anywhere in the story. But it goes without saying, I guess, that in jobs from which no one is ever fired, all the employees are performing optimally.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

It's the regulations, stupid

Yikes!



 IBD:

The Obama administration imposed 75 new major rules in its first 26 months, costing the private sector more than $40 billion, according to a Heritage Foundation study. "No other president has imposed as high a number or cost in a comparable time period," noted the study's author, James Gattuso.

The number of pages in the Federal Register — where all new rules must be published and which serves as proxy of regulatory activity — jumped 18% in 2010.

This July, regulators imposed a total of 379 new rules that will cost more than $9.5 billion, according to an analysis by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo.

And much more is on the way. The Federal Register notes that more than 4,200 regulations are in the pipeline. That doesn't count impending clean air rules from the EPA, new derivative rules, or the FCC's net neutrality rule. Nor does that include recently announced fuel economy mandates or eventual ObamaCare and Dodd-Frank regulations.

But what's good for regulators isn't necessarily good for the private sector, as compliance burdens impose ever-increasing costs on businesses.

"Our economy is continuing to sink," Sen. Barrasso said, "and it's being weighed down by regulations coming out of this administration."

Read the rest.

Hat tip: Hot Air

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Alternate vacation

Victor Davis Hanson wonders whose idea was Martha's Vineyard:

If the president thought that a campaign bus tour would rescue his numbers, he was mistaken — it seems to have had the opposite effect, perhaps because it seemed staged, almost like what a wealthy person would do if he wanted to act “real” for a bit.

Almost!

But if President Obama has already purchased the new bus, why not use it Winnebago-style to see America with his family for a week, visiting a national park, a closed-down plant — or a real vineyard?

Pleeze. You can barely squeeze two chefs into that bus. What part of "family time" don't you understand?


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Video: Milton Friedman on making the wrong people do the right thing

In the discussion below about the vices and virtues of a certain presidential candidate, I'm reminded of this Milton Friedman statement:



Steyn, by way of introduction to After America's epilogue, "The Hope of Audacity," quotes the great Professor Friedman:

I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office. [AA, p. 325]

That most desirable climate is now in fact being established, and it's the grass-roots, smaller-government Tea Party movement that's doing the establishing.

What we need to do is nominate the most conservative candidates possible and then relentlessly hold their feet to the fire. More and more Americans are coming to understand this.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Perry and Gardasil

I thought I had written about Rick Perry's Gardasil fiat a while back but all I could find in my archives was an unpublished draft from June 22. Here it is:

Katie Thompson, writing at Legal Insurrection, makes a case for a Rick Perry candidacy and goes through some of his baggage. Blogger RhymesWithRight commented on the Gardasil controversy:

1) Actually, the executive order did not include much of an opt-out provision.

2) Perry and his staff initially indicated that he would not abide by any legislative directive to discontinue the program, because he didn’t believe the legislature had the authority to overrule the executive order. he only changed his tune when legislation was passed in both houses by more than the margin needed for impeachment.

3) The logic behind vaccines as a condition of admission to schools is that certain diseases are likely to be passed in a classroom setting. Speaking as a teacher, I’d like to point out that since HPV is a sexually transmitted disease, it is unlikely to be passed in the classroom. Interestingly enough, there are a number of vaccines (meningitis, for example) that Perry did not seek to mandate, despite the fact that they are more easily passed in the classroom.

I like Rick Perry but I have a real problem with this. 

I was hoping for an acknowledgment from Perry that this was all a dreadful mistake, a serious misjudgment on his part. He has recently expressed regrets, but weakly and with less than total candor.

Please see the following for the full story of his controversial 2007 executive order to mandate the newly-approved Gardasil vaccine for every sixth-grade girl in Texas:

Tom Bevan, June 4: Rick Perry's Gardasil Problem

In January 2007, Gardasil was put on the "recommended" immunization schedule issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Centers for Disease Control. Merck immediately mounted a massive lobbying effort of state legislatures around the country to get Gardasil added to their respective lists of state-mandated vaccines.

But in Texas, Gov. Perry chose to bypass the legislature and on Feb. 2, 2007, he issued an executive order making Texas the first state in the country requiring all sixth-grade girls to receive the three-shot vaccination series (which cost about $120 per shot). The move generated a fierce public debate. Conservatives slammed Perry for promoting what they saw as an intrusion by the state into private health decisions of parents and their children. Some also complained that the mandate would encourage promiscuity among teenagers.

Joshua Mercer, June 16: Rick Perry's Catholic Problem

Mandating that all 11-year-olds get vaccinated against a sexually-transmitted disease represents a statist mentality when it comes to the fundamental need to reform the role of family in culture.

Michelle Malkin, today: Rick Perry's bad, Obama-style Medicine

Not only did Perry defend going above the heads of elected state legislators, but his office also falsely claimed the legislature had no right to repeal the executive order. “The order is effective until Perry or a successor changes it, and the Legislature has no authority to repeal it,” Perry spokeswoman Krista Moody told The Washington Post in February 2007.

When both the House and Senate repealed the law six weeks later, Perry did not — as he now claims — listen humbly or “agree with their decision.”

Human shield demagoguery. In response to the legislature’s rebuke, the infuriated governor attacked those who supported repeal as “shameful” spreaders of “misinformation” who were putting “women’s lives” at risk. Borrowing a tried-and-true Alinskyite page from the progressive left, Perry surrounded himself with female cervical cancer victims and deflected criticism of his imperial tactics with emotional anecdotes.

He then lionized himself and the minority of politicians who voted against repeal of his Gardasil order. “They will never have to think twice about whether they did the right thing. No lost lives will occupy the confines of their conscience, sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.” Perry, of course, has now put his own ghastly Gardasil order on that same altar — but with no apology to all those he demonized and exploited along the way.

Perry also opened himself to charges of cronyism, mandating the vaccine to put money in Merck's pocket. Read the rest of Michelle's column for the details.

It can't be seen as anything but glaring government overreach, can it? I'm still very disturbed by it. Speaking as a mother of daughters, I have to say that Perry's Gardasil mandate is the kind of unholy statist invasion into the family that makes me crazy, and angry. What's more, I'm turned off, repelled, even, by the hubris evident in Perry's unilateral mandate. In my wilder fantasies, I dream of a president whose confidence is tempered by humility. I fear this isn't one of Perry's strengths.

But reasonable people have reminded me that the Gardasil fiasco is just one part of Perry's ten-year record as governor. His pro-life record is unassailable. His commitment to smaller government seems genuine. I'll take him over Romney without hesitation. (I do like a couple of the other candidates but I expect them to be long gone by the time my primary rolls around next spring.) Behind-the-scenes agitation aside, I'll be very surprised if someone new and wonderful jumps into the race. So I'm looking at what's offered and taking a tentative step in Perry's direction.

Michelle Malkin is right: now is the time to take a hard look at the candidates:

As for the ridiculous idea that scrutinizing Perry’s much-bragged-out gubernatorial record is tantamount to “smearing” him, toughen up, buttercups. This is just the beginning of 2012 campaign heat. Limited government activists already know Perry’s ready, willing, and able to dish it out against them. If Perry can’t take it from supposed allies and friends on his own side of the aisle, why should he be trusted as the GOP contender against our Democratic enemies?

We need to know what we're getting.

Linked by Michelle Malkin -- thanks!
Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Video: Forty-vehicle motorcade rolls through Minnesota

Via Granny Jan and White House Dossier:



Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

So it begins: Perry is like a mass murderer or something

Mendacious lefties loose the hounds on Gov. Rick Perry. Charlie Spiering reports:

Liberals and others on Twitter suggest that Perry's comments were a threat to Bernanke, warning him not to travel to Texas for fear of bodily harm.

Nouriel Roubini, a NYU professor tweeted: "The mind of Rick Perry (his sick words on Bernanke) is not much different from that of the Norway mass murdered. Loaded words cause violence"

Mercy me! What did Perry say?

If this guy [Ben Bernanke] prints more money between now and the election,” Perry said, “I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we -- we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous -- or treasonous in my opinion.

The Iowa crowd chuckles lightly, a sign that they understand the lighthearted comment laced with Texas swagger.

Sorry, metaphorical language is verboten. Unless you're a liberal.

Video here. Sheesh. I'm not sure I have the stomach for another fifteen months of this noxious foolishness. (And this is only the beginning. It will get much, much worse.)

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Bad luck, that's what he's got

Obama's new theme: He's got bad luck:

"We had reversed the recession, avoided a depression, gotten the economy moving again," Obama told a crowd in Decorah, Iowa.  "But over the last six months we've had a run of bad luck."  Obama listed three events overseas -- the Arab Spring uprisings, the tsunami in Japan, and the European debt crises -- which set the economy back.

Bonus track: The Love I Lost

***

Byron York, in arguing that, contrary to what the administration says, this is a campaign trip, adds the following:

Except for its updated details, much of the president's speech resembled the stump speeches he gave when campaigning for Democrats before the 2010 midterm elections.  

Talk about failed policies of the past. And it's been confirmed that this failed approach comes directly from Obama himself. Let's see, how's it working out this time?

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Have heart

I just got a chance to listen to Mark Steyn's Song of the Week podcast from two weeks ago, a tribute to Richard Adler, and now I know what's missing from After America: a pocket glued inside the back cover holding a CD of the podcast's finale, "You Gotta Have Heart." It could serve as a little pick-me-up for down-in-the-dumps readers.

This week Mark's got a podcast celebrating the centenary of Lucille Ball, featuring a snippet of this:



Ahh. And a snippet of this. Awesome. (Peggy does "Hey There" on the same CD.)

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Rick Perry: He'll do

Probably. It's still early days. But I've got one foot tentatively planted on the Rick Perry bandwagon. What's not to like in a candidate with a solid ten-year record as governor of a big state, a guy who oozes competence instead of island cool and thinks government should matter less, not more?

Another point in Perry's favor: He's not Romney.

Perry's not our savior, either, but that's a good thing. Any candidate who so much as hints that he can influence sea level should be escorted out of town the old-fashioned way.

Gov. Perry will be found to be a less than perfect person with a less than perfect record. But barring revelations that he sets fires and tortures small animals, he'll probably do. (Attention Perry campaign: feel free to help yourselves to that rousing slogan.)


Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Unemployment problem solved!

The New York Times reports:

The administration may also merge the Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and some economic divisions at the State Department into a new agency, administration officials said. Possible names include the Department of Jobs or the Department of Competitiveness. 

Brilliant. How about the Department of I-Got-Nuthin? The man is floundering. Doesn't he have a bus to catch or something?

James Pethokoukis's tweets:

So Obama White House thinks the single best thing to help the economy is reelecting Obama? That's ther reelex argument?

***

Linked by Larwin -- thank you!
Welcome, Instapundit readers! Make yourselves at home.
Welcome also to Beltway Confidential and Ace Of Spades readers. Y'all put your feet up and set a spell.
Also linked at the Sundries Shack -- thanks!

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

When you've lost Colbert King . . .

He votes no on Martha's Vineyard:

But to be leaving town to spend 10 days luxuriating in an affluent, New England summer town when millions of Americans can’t find work? To fly off to the Vineyard when the public is losing faith in Washington’s ability to fix the nation’s economic problems, and with people anxious about their futures?

What is he thinking? It’s not as if the Obama family is living in deprivation in Washington.

Without leaving the White House grounds, they have access to five full-time chefs, a tennis court, a bowling alley, a swimming pool, a jogging trail, a putting green and a movie theater that shows first-run films on demand. That’s hardly roughing it.

And if the president ever feels the need to get away, let’s say to seek a little solitude and tranquility beyond the confines of hot and humid Washington, the American taxpayers have thoughtfully provided a secluded country residence for the first family’s exclusive use in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountain Park. It’s called Camp David. A hardship post it is not.

Camp David comes equipped with 24-hour guard service, including fighter jets, to keep gawkers and riff-raff out of sight. For presidential enjoyment, Camp David’s wooded mountaintop has a swimming pool, a sauna, tennis courts, a bowling alley, a trout stream and movie facilities, again with first-run features on demand.

Two royal palaces, fit for a king. But they're not enough. What's missing is a seaside golf course. It's just not family time without one.

King's argument is partly a political one: bad optics, dude!

I could go on and on but lucky for you I've got to get ready for church. Enjoy your Sunday.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

Steyn on London

Mark Steyn's non-stop publicity tour for his new book hasn't taken the edge off his writing. A bit from his weekend column on the London riots:

The great-grandparents of these brutes stood alone against a Fascist Europe in that dark year after the fall of France in 1940. Their grandparents were raised in one of the most peaceful and crime-free nations on the planet. Were those Englishmen of the mid-20th century to be magically transplanted to London today, they’d assume they were in some fantastical remote galaxy. If Charlton Heston was horrified to discover the Planet of the Apes was his own, Britons are beginning to realize that the remote desert island of Lord of the Flies is, in fact, located just off the coast of Europe in the north-east Atlantic. Within two generations of the Blitz and the Battle of Britain, a significant proportion of the once-free British people entrusted themselves to social rewiring by liberal compassionate Big Government and thereby rendered themselves paralytic and unemployable save for non-speaking parts in Rise of the Planet of the Apes. And even that would likely be too much like hard work.

As for the "Depraved City's" "cowed and craven politically correct constabulary," sure, they may stand idly by as private property is destroyed in front of their very faces, but they won't tolerate one iota of hippohomophobia. Read the rest.

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.

NARAL "very worried" about a Perry candidacy

LifeNews.com: NARAL Slams Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Pro-Life Abortion Record

Titled “The Rick Perry Primer: His Record on Choice,” NARAL president Nancy Keenan opined on Perry’s treatment of abortion and said “my staff and I have been working to answer” the question of what abortion activists know about Perry, who has received A grades from the two top pro-life organizations in the state. [. . .]

[NARAL president Nancy] Keenan complains about a bill Perry signed that would allow women to receive information about abortion’s risks and alternatives 24 hours before getting an abortion. Although Gallup polling data shows such laws enjoy the support of pro-life and “pro-choice” Americans, Keenan ripped into Perry with a misleading statement about it.

“Many of the laws he signed inject political interference into women’s private decision-making. Gov. Perry signed into law a measure that would require women to receive a state-mandated lecture that includes medically inaccurate information before they can access abortion care. He then signed additional legislation amending the law to force some women to make two trips to the provider before receiving abortion care,” she said.

Keenan also blasted Perry for signing a bill that allow, not requires, women to see an ultrasound of their unborn child that abortion practitioners normally don’t allow them to see: “Just this year, Gov. Perry signed into law a bill requiring that a woman seeking abortion care undergo an ultrasound–even if she does not want one, and even if her doctor does not recommend it.”

The NARAL president has problems with Perry helping women — both before and after an abortion. [. . .]

Ultimately, the pro-abortion activists says ” the prospect of President Perry should make us very worried. He has made inflammatory statements indicating how he would govern as an anti-choice president, calling Roe v. Wade “a shameful footnote in our nation’s history books” and “a stark reminder that our culture and our country are still in peril.”

“Let’s not forget that the president has tremendous influence over reproductive-health policy in the United States,” she concludes. “It’s never too early to take a look at the record of someone who wants to live in the White House.”

It's certainly true that NARAL and their ilk knew what they were getting with Barack Obama and they liked what they saw:

"TEMPORARILY ALIVE"

SENATOR OBAMA: This bill was fairly extensively debated in the Judiciary Committee, and so I won’t belabor the issue. I do want to just make sure that everybody in the Senate knows what this bill is about, as I understand it. Senator O’Malley, the testimony during the committee indicated that one of the key concerns was — is that there was a method of abortion, an induced abortion, where the — the fetus or child, as — as some might describe it, is still temporarily alive outside the womb. And one of the concerns that came out in the testimony was the fact that they were not being properly cared for during that brief period of time that they were still living. Is that correct? Is that an accurate sort of description of one of the key concerns in the bill?

And more on p. 86 of the transcript:

Well, it turned out — that during the testimony a number of members who are typically in favor of a woman’s right to choose an abortion were actually sympathetic to some of the concerns that your — you raised and that were raised by witnesses in the testimony. And there was some suggestion that we might be able to craft something that might meet constitutional muster with respect to caring for fetuses or children who were delivered in this fashion. Unfortunately, this bill goes a little bit further, and so I just want to suggest, not that I think it’ll make too much difference with respect to how we vote, that this is probably not going to survive constitutional scrutiny. Number one, whenever we define a previable fetus as a person that is protected by the equal protection clause or the other elements in the Constitution, what we’re really saying is, in fact, that they are persons that are entitled to the kinds of protections that would be provided to a — a child, a nine-month-old — child that was delivered to term. That determination then, essentially, if it was accepted by a court, would forbid abortions to take place. I mean, it — it would essentially bar abortions, because the equal protection clause does not allow somebody to kill a child, and if this is a child, then this would be an antiabortion statute. For that purpose, I think it would probably be found unconstitutional. The second reason that it would probably be found unconstitutional is that this essentially says that a doctor is required to provide treatment to a previable child, or fetus, however way you want to describe it. Viability is the line that has been drawn by the Supreme Court to determine whether or not an abortion can or cannot take place. And if we’re placing a burden on the doctor that says you have to keep alive even a previable child as long as possible and give them as much medical attention as — as is necessary to try to keep that child alive, then we’re probably crossing the line in terms of unconstitutionality. Now, as I said before, this probably won’t make any difference. I recall the last time we had a debate about abortion, we passed a bill out of here. I suggested to Members of the Judiciary Committee that it was unconstitutional and it would be struck down by the Seventh Circuit. It was. I recognize this is a passionate issue, and so I — I won’t, as I said, belabor the point. I think it’s important to recognize though that this is an area where potentially we might have compromised and — and arrived at a bill that dealt with the narrow concerns about how a — a previable fetus or child was treated by a hospital. We decided not to do that. We’re going much further than that in this bill. As a consequence, I think that we will probably end up in court once again, as we often do, on this issue. And as a consequence, I’ll be voting Present.

More from IL state senator Obama, bravely taking a stand against babies who weren't "limp and dead" enough: 

"LIMP AND DEAD":

As I understand it, this puts the burden on the attending physician who has determined, since they were performing this procedure, that, in fact, this is a nonviable fetus; that if that fetus, or child - however way you want to describe it - is now outside the mother's womb and the doctor continues to think that it's nonviable but there's, let's say, movement or some indication that, in fact, they're not just coming out limp and dead, that, in fact, they would then have to call a second physician to monitor and check off and make sure that this is not a live child that could be saved. [p. 32 of transcript]

Sorry to ruin your breakfast. Rick Perry is looking pretty good to me about now. He passes the "I am not a ghoul" test with flying colors. Read the rest of the LifeNews post.
 

Most recent posts here. Twitter feed here. Amazon store here.