Ed Morrissey wonders. I don’t think that the LBJ comparison is quite apt. While LBJ did think a lot of himself, he was also in pretty bad health, and likely knew that another term would kill him (he barely lasted that time period without being president). I think that Obama is far too self delusional to not run again.
On the other hand, Michael Malone has some interesting advice for the president, that he won’t take.
[Update late afternoon]
Wrong link in the second one. It’s fixed now.
…have been laid bare in England:
The Left-liberal camp is in overdrive in its campaign to rewrite history (or, in its own vocabulary, to alter consciousness): you did not see thousands of jubilant thugs rampaging through the streets, destroying livelihoods and property for the sheer exultant joy of it. What you saw were society’s victims responding to any or all of the following: bankers’ bonuses, MPs cheating on their expenses, unemployment, government spending cuts, poverty, social inequality, etc, etc. Their crimes were simply part of the same package of callous selfishness displayed by (as one particularly bizarre equation had it) tabloid phone hackers.
What is not ludicrous and insulting to common sense in these propositions is contradictory in its own terms. There are indeed views of the human condition which hold that all species of wickedness are connected, because they are all rooted in the fact that man is a fallen creature. But somehow I doubt that the ardent liberal secularists who were piping up last week were believers in original sin or the machinations of the Devil.
The moral equivalence that they wanted to establish between looters and arsonists on the one hand, and the perpetrators of any other kind of bad behaviour you can think of on the other, was rooted in ideological, not theological, orthodoxy. The rioting gangs could not simply be what they seemed – what they so obviously were – because that would be a devastating victory for the judgment of popular opinion over the fantasies of liberalism.
There’s actually nothing “liberal” about it.
Here’s a bubble.
And it’s about to pop, I think.
Roger Kimball explains.
I should add one more item to my list of things that the next Congress and administration should do — repeal the Community Reinvestment Act.
The new front in the war that the administration pretends doesn’t exist.
…and the foundation of liberty:
It all comes down to this: Is there an inalienable right to self-defense? If there is, each man has indisputable, inestimable value, value that he may rightly preserve even if the life of another man is forfeit. A man may kill another in lawful self-defense even if the policy preferences of the state would prefer his death. If a right to self-defense actually exists, it is in a very real sense the highest law of the land and all lesser laws must pay it deference. It fundamentally defines the social contract, the nature of the relationship between man and the state.
But if there is no such inalienable right, the entire nature of the social contract is changed. Each man’s worth is measured solely by his utility to the state, and as such the value of his life rides a roller coaster not unlike the stock market: dependent not only upon the preferences of the party in power but upon the whims of its political leaders and the permanent bureaucratic class. The proof of this analysis surrounds us.
We have to remove these tyrants from power as soon as possible.
Is it the answer to the heavy-lift problem?
I agree with Jeff Foust. Simply put, no.
You know who else liked them?
The Nordic landscape cries out to be traversed by rails over which express trains can speed. It is a characteristic of all Nordic vehicles to increase their speed. Ever-increasing velocity is a built-in characteristic of the rails themselves, the rails by which, in the Nordic experience of the world, the whole world is penetrated. Rails that are already in existence and those that must constantly be constructed for ever newer, ever faster vehicles on which men who experience the world Nordically may strive toward ever new goals. The Nordic soul experiences its world as a structure made up of countless thoroughfares — those already at hand and those still to be created — on land, on water, in the air, and in the stratosphere. It races like a fever through all segments of the Nordic community, a fever of speed which, infectiously, reaches out far beyond the world of the north and attacks souls who are not Nordic and for whom, at bottom, such action is contrary to their style and senseless.
Take a guess. Of course, he was militantly opposed to smoking and a vegetarian, too.
[Via Althouse]
An interesting interview on the state of politics in Norway:
After the publication of the report on anti-Semitism in June, the minister had the courage to state that our politicians did have a responsibility for the situation, saying that: “A jargon of slang terms which may have unintended and very grave consequences, may easily take root. Those of us who have the political responsibility must talk about this and counteract such expressions.” Unfortunately, he had forgotten his own piece of good advice — as late as the day before the shooting he met his expectant colleagues with unmistakably anti-Israeli slogans, saying to his cheering young audience: “The Palestinians must have their own state. The occupation must end, the wall must be torn down, and this must happen now!”
One of the more long-term negative consequences of this brutal terrorist act in Norway is a limitation of the freedom of speech. People have become terrified of being connected to the mass-murderer, whom the media describe as a “conservative Christian fundamentalist.” This tag is sufficient to paralyze half of the Norwegian population, where the majority of the supporters of Israel and the Jews are found. At present we observe a form of slanderous media defamation of Christians which in some cases has already acquired an eerie resemblance to classical anti-Semitism. This witch hunt, spreading like a steppe fire, has already paralyzed conservative bloggers in this country, and I fear others will also suffer before the media may end up with the classical compromise of blaming the Jews.
Well, it seems to have done its job.
…in which he was apparently supposed to tour, and the hoi polloi were supposed to listen. A roundup.
[Late morning update]
An interesting comment on Stephen Green’s post at PJM:
Obama hasn’t had to do one thing in his entire life, and he is still the most powerful man in the world. Think about it: Lincoln was an obscure country lawyer with a horrible marriage and failed in his attempt to win a Senate seat. Churchill faced multiple failures – he was rejected by the British people before they turned to him in 1939. Eisenhower was an insignificant colonel in his 40′s before WWII. Truman failed in business and was considered a non-entity before FDR died. Reagan failed to win the presidency his first time and was scorned by the national media. All became the top political leader in the world. Everybody else is stopped at the level of supervisor, or county clerk, or VP of Sales. Everybody faces failure in his or her life.
Nobody, NOBODY skates through life like the Boy King has. Nobody in the last 200 years that is.
Read the whole thing.