FWIW, my desk (and office) has always looked a lot more like the first three than the last one. I’d be embarrassed to upload the pic. Though not as much as I would have been before I saw this.
[Via my buddy Glenn, who has desk problems of his own, apparently]
…versus Rousseau. This is why I refuse to dignify leftists with the word “liberal.”
[Afternoon update]
I liked this comment on the debate with a Perry/Obama race:
Candidate Perry: My state gained a million jobs with no state income tax and a part-time legislature that meets every other year.
Candidate Obama: But Bush was my predecessor. I inherited what he left.
Candidate Perry: Ditto.
Heh.
Some thoughts on their educational power.
And, actually, I suspect that this particular lemonade stand taught a particularly valuable lesson about the role of government.
…by Obama’s EPA.
Can’t have it producing all those jobs and making the president look bad. Especially when the governor may be running against him.
Thoughts from Stanley Kurtz:
For President Obama to choose this moment of overstretch and crisis to commit us to a supposedly humanitarian intervention in a land with no vital American interests at stake is little short of madness. Obama’s obliviousness to our pressing military and financial burdens as he pursues utopian dreams of international governance is the perfect counterpart to his domestic policy of pulling us toward European socialism just as the welfare state itself is collapsing across the West. We can only conclude that Obama is far less interested in either American strategic advantage or economic prosperity, traditionally defined, than in his dreams of an equality-of-result society and a multilaterally governed world.
With the Middle East slowly turning into a series of tin-cup-rattling failed states, and with Obama blithely embarking on a postmodern adventure in supposed humanitarianism when real military dangers threaten at every turn, why shouldn’t conservatives question where all this is leading? Hawkish democratizing optimists have chosen to overlook both Obama’s internationalist justifications for war in Libya and his refusal to quickly go for the kill. In doing so, they are hoping to forge a hawkish, bipartisan consensus in the country as a whole. This is a mistake, and is leading instead to the very opposite result. What Americans urgently need right now is a foreign policy that makes distinctions between our greater and lesser interests, and above all, a policy based on a realistic assessment of what is happening in the Middle East.
Foreign policy is often viewed through a partisan lens, which is why many Democrats are quite sanguine about the same policies unde Barack Obama that outraged them when perpetrated by George Bush. But I think that we will see a pretty major change in foreign policy from the next president, regardless of who it is.
I have a new piece up at the Washington Examiner on Monday night’s space questions.
Such is the state of Obama’s America that a dismaying number of people think that banning ATMs would be good for the economy. It’s the new Luddism, led by the Ignoramus-in-Chief.
I’m not a big David Brooks fan, but he takes the political class to task much more than he’s usually willing to in today’s column.
Morgenson and Rosner write with barely suppressed rage, as if great crimes are being committed. But there are no crimes. This is how Washington works. Only two of the characters in this tale come off as egregiously immoral. Johnson made $100 million while supposedly helping the poor. Representative Barney Frank, whose partner at the time worked for Fannie, was arrogantly dismissive when anybody raised doubts about the stability of the whole arrangement.
Most of the people were simply doing what reputable figures do in service to a supposedly good cause. Johnson roped in some of the most respected establishment names: Bill Daley, Tom Donilan, Joseph Stiglitz, Dianne Feinstein, Kit Bond, Franklin Raines, Larry Summers, Robert Zoellick, Ken Starr and so on.
Of course, it all came undone. Underneath, Fannie was a cancer that helped spread risky behavior and low standards across the housing industry. We all know what happened next.
The scandal has sent the message that the leadership class is fundamentally self-dealing. Leaders on the center-right and center-left are always trying to create public-private partnerships to spark socially productive activity. But the biggest public-private partnership to date led to shameless self-enrichment and disastrous results.
It has sent the message that we have hit the moment of demosclerosis. Washington is home to a vertiginous tangle of industry associations, activist groups, think tanks and communications shops. These forces have overwhelmed the government that was originally conceived by the founders.
The reckoning started last November, but the real one is yet to come.
You don’t say. Unexpectedly! too…
As Glenn often says, a repeat of Carter is a best-case scenario.
[Update a few minutes later]
Really? You don’t say. Stagflation creates a dangerous position for the economy.