The case is made.
Intellectual Insanity
The lamps are going out all over the world. Deliberately this time.
Appalling
Why has Obama treated Netanyahu so rudely?
It seems pretty clear to me that, of all of the countries in the Middle East, there’s only one where he wants to see a regime change.
[Update a couple minutes later]
Instapundit has a theory:
Possibly Obama just hates Israel and hates Jews. That’s plausible — certainly nothing in his actions suggests otherwise, really.
But it’s also possible — I’d say likely — that there’s something else going on. I think Obama expects Israel to strike Iran, and wants to put distance between the United States and Israel in advance of that happening. (Perhaps he even thinks that treating Israel rudely will provoke such a response, saving him the trouble of doing anything about Iran himself, and avoiding the risk that things might go wrong if he does). On the most optimistic level, maybe this whole thing is a sham, and the U.S. is really helping Israel strike Iran, with this as distraction. The question for readers is which of these — not necessarily mutually exclusive — explanations is most plausible.
I’m going to go with Occam’s Razor myself. I’ve seen no evidence that Obama gives a damn whether or not Iran gets nukes (and perhaps he would even be happy to see it — who knows)?
[Update mid morning]
We are all Bibi Netanyahu now:
I think the reaction to Obama’s treatment of Bibi Netanyahu hits home because it was so personal in nature, and because it epitomized how the American people have been treated by Obama and the Democrats, with arrogance and disdain.
We have seen this attitude since the Inauguration, when Obama and the crowd treated George W. Bush with disrespect, in the smears by Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and other leading Democrats against health care protesters, in the daily attacks by the left-wing blogs and mainstream media against the Tea Party members, in the treatment of Sarah Palin and Trig Palin, in the bribes and budgetary chicanery used to pass a health care bill opposed by a significant majority of the population, and in the disgusting use of the race card to stifle legitimate political dissent.
In Bibi Netanyahu we see something we have lost in our leader, an unflinching sense of national destiny, an unapologetic pride in who we are and why we are, and a willingness to stand up to tyrants and neighborhood bullies regardless of the price.
Instead, we have a bully for a leader, who prefers the company of other bullies to true democrats.
You Don’t Say
Congress apparently didn’t bother to read the bill before voting on it and passing it. I guess it’s just too much trouble.
Do they have any concept of what incompetent boobs they appear to be to we normal people?
It’s A High Bar
But Paul Krugman may have hurdled it — his dumbest statement yet:
Democrats had a lot of harsh things to say about former President George W. Bush — but you’ll search in vain for anything comparably menacing.
I guess he didn’t get out much. But it doesn’t matter, because…you know…assassination threats and wishes against George Bush weren’t racist. And hateful.
[Saturday morning update]
Paul Krugman always gets the memo.
What a tool.
What’s Wrong With Us?
With the results of the recent Iraqi election coming in, it just occurs to me that seemingly all fledgling democracies follow a parliamentary model. Has anyone copied our system? I know there are places that have “presidents,” but I’m not sure that they’re particularly faithful to our model in anything else, including separation of powers.
Where Are You?
I’m not particularly obsessive, and I have some social skills, so my self-diagnosis is that I’m near the intersection of dweeb, nerd and geek, but not quite in any of them.
[Update a couple minutes later]
OK, I realize that it’s just a Venn diagram, and not quantitative in the way implied by my positioning. But I’m really not obsessive, so if I’m in any intersection, it would make me a dweeb.
Lovestruck
I know, some people think this joke is past its sell-by date, but I can’t get enough of them. I liked the reassurance about helping her trim.
The New Kansas-Nebraska Act
Some historical thoughts from Tony Blankley (an immigrant who understands the foundational principles of this country):
…we enter our history’s second stage in the struggle against the abomination of socialism. Just as slavery had been contained in the South, so entitlement socialism has, until this week, been more or less contained in service to only the poor and the elderly — and even those programs (for the elderly) operate on the principle of beneficiaries paying monthly premiums for the benefits they will later get (Medicare/Social Security). Only the poor, under Medicaid, received benefit without premium payment.
But now, just as the Kansas-Nebraska Act broke through the geographic limit to slave states, the Democratic party’s 2010 health-care law has broken the boundary that limited socialism. Now, the chains of socialism are to be clamped onto the able-bodied middle class — not merely retirees who have paid their insurance premiums and the presumed-helpless poor.
Forcing people to pay for others’ welfare is just a new form of slavery. Or, as Hayek wrote, serfdom.
