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Category Archives: Political Commentary
Another Karine-A
Noah Pollack has the story:
What will Obama say about all this? Being that evidence of Iranian-Syrian hostile intent complicates the administration’s desire for “engagement,” whatever that means anymore, the answer is: probably nothing.
What will the human-rights hustlers say? Where is Judge Goldstone? Where is the flurry of outraged press releases from Human Rights Watch? These weapons are intended for one purpose only — to terrorize Israeli civilians and drag the region into war. Shouldn’t this be an easy call for peace-loving human-rights activists? HRW has condemned Israel for violating international law over the way it funds public schools. I would bet a large sum that HRW will say nothing about the 500 tons of arms Iran just tried to send to Hezbollah. Priorities, you see.
That this is happening almost exactly thirty years after the hostage taking in Tehran is particularly appalling.
The Inherited Deficits Fallacy
Keith Hennessy on Barack Obama’s Bart Simpson defense.
I would add that it’s not possible to know to what degree “tax cuts” boosted the deficit, because they weren’t “tax cuts.” They were tax rate cuts, and they may have actually reduced it by boosting the economy and incomes.
A Free-Market Party?
The rise of free-market populism in this country finally has manifested in an election. And judging from the hyperbolic reactions, you know it’s a political movement with staying power.
When tepid, traditional conservative candidate Doug Hoffman knocked off liberal Republican Dede Scozzafava—a candidate who was supported by nearly every boogeyman in the GOP handbook—you might have thought that the rabble had stormed the Bastille.
Sophisticated New York Times columnist Frank Rich called the event “a riotous and bloody national G.O.P. civil war” and compared the conservative surge to a murderous Stalinist purge. (Remarkably, the esteemed wordsmith failed to unleash similar histrionic language when one-time-Democrat Sen. Joe Lieberman met the same fate.)
Purging moderates is indeed a self-destructive strategy for any national party. But running a party without any litmus tests on the central issue of the economy seems to be similarly self-defeating.
The most impressive trick played by Rich and other liberals, though, is creating a narrative wherein the ones attempting to fundamentally reconfigure the American economy are cast as the moderates.
The nearly powerless who stand in their way? Well, they play the part of Stalinists.
But of course, as Orwell pointed out, the real Stalinists are the people who torture the language like Frank Rich does.
Is It 1993 Again?
…or 1938?
Democrats lost 80 seats in the 1938 election, after gaining seats in 1930, 1932, 1934 and 1936.
How did this happen? As Amity Shlaes notes in her history of the Depression, “The Forgotten Man,” Roosevelt believed less competition and high wages would heal the economy. Aided by Congress, he went about engineering those two things with a vengeance, trebling the size of the federal government in less than a decade.
At the time, such drastic action may have seemed warranted. Within three years of the 1929 crash, GDP had fallen nearly a third and a fourth of the U.S. work force was idle. Even so, the economy appeared to stabilize in 1934 and 1935, and in 1936, Democrats won landslides in both Congress and the presidency.
What happened next is a tale of overreach and hubris — one that holds lessons for today’s Democrats.
But they seem determined not to learn them. Because to do so would negate their entire world view.
A Question For Ares Supporters
Is there any amount of money that this thing could cost that would cause you to say, “OK, it’s not worth it”? Because to listen to them defend it, you’d sure think that the answer is “no.” That the only important thing is that it’s “safe,” and to hell with the cost.
Congratulations LaserMotive
It looks like they just won almost a million dollars in the power beaming contest.
I sure hope that the administration will request a lot more money for Centennial Challenges, and Congress grant it. Tomorrow’s award of the NGLLC prizes at the Rayburn Building would be a good opportunity to make the point that, dollar for dollar, they put to shame anything else that NASA is doing, Constellation most of all.
They Couldn’t Have Found Anyone With More Expertise
If this is true, whoever sets up lectures at Harvard had his sense of irony removed at birth:
HARVARD UNIVERSITY EDMOND J. SAFRA FOUNDATION CENTER FOR ETHICS
Eliot Spitzer, former Governor and Attorney General of New York, will deliver a public lecture as part of the 2009/10 Labs Lectures on the Question of Institutional Corruption.
Truly amazing.
Declaring Victory
…over at DumpDede.com.
More Augustine Thoughts
Dennis Wingo says that NASA doesn’t need more money, it just needswhat NASA needs is a better architectural approach. I agree. But that’s doesn’t keep the jobs in the right places.
Despite my initial misreading of it, though, I even think that it’s possible to do it without the extra three billion. And it had better be, because I doubt if they’re going to get it.