We welcome change and openness; for we believe that freedom and security go together, that the advance of human liberty can only strengthen the cause of world peace. There is one sign the Soviets can make that would be unmistakable, that would advance dramatically the cause [...]
Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows
when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both
superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by the same [...]
In the latest effort by the Obama administration to continue the worst policies of the Bush administration, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs announced increased tariffs on Chinese tires of an extra 35 percent in the first year, 30 percent in the second, and 25 percent in the third. The [...]
Every once in a while we get a stark example of how markets are simply much more efficient than government. The latest example: While Congress is being slammed for planning to spend $550 million for a handful of new jets, including $66 million a piece for three Gulfstream G550s with [...]
I used to like Jackson Browne back when he was still putting out good music... In sixty-nine he was twenty one and called the road his own...
Lately the tired old liberal is out of creativity with nothing better to do than file frivolous lawsuits... I don't know when that road' [...]
Liberals (and, to be fair, some compassionate «conservatives») like to tout the value of youth service. Youth service at McDonald's, Burger King, Taco Bell or Wal-Mart is worth roughly $8 an hour, depending on location. Unwilling service at the point of a gun (Obama and Rangel's national service proposals) or [...]
According to AP reports, the CIA program about which Dick Cheney supposedly kept Congress in the dark was an effort to gain intelligence and carry out killings of Al Qaeda leaders at close range, rather than through air strikes that risked collateral damage. Congress wasn't informed because the program never' [...]
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a [...]
First they came for the heroin and crack addicts and I didn't speak up because I don't use heroin or crack.
Then they came for the smokers and chewers and I didn't speak up because those are nasty habits.
Then they came for heavy drinkers and I didn't speak up because speakeasies [...]
As predicted, the Chrysler bankruptcy case has raised questions worthy of Supreme Court review and the Court has just temporarily stayed the sale of Chrysler to Fiat. It will be interesting to see whether the Court that surrendered the private property rights of homeowners in Kelo will be as [...]
Here for your amusement and edification are ten cars that won't meet President Obama's fuel efficiency standard - and I didn't even come close to listing the Hummer or the Lamborghini Gallardo.
The Mini Cooper with a combined 29 MPG.The idea that what passes for a government in Somalia could ask for international funding to solve the problem of Somali piracy is comic. That Rep. Donald M. Payne (D-N.J.) actually intends to seek funding for the ridiculous proposal in Congress is tragic. That Payne's party claims the legacy of' [...]
In the big flurry of economic news lately I have a lot of questions and, because I'm just that arrogant, a few answers.
Video game sales were up 10% in February. Now this is a big question. Are video games an inferior good? Obviously when times are shaky, people are going' [...]
If you want to identify a pseudo-conservative and don't have access to a D.C. phone directory, here are a few points to look for:
1. A penchant for using a sometime association with the Republican Party and an occasional attempt to intellectually support some conservative principle in a pale imitation of' [...]
A few times a year I'll get a hateful comment or a bit of hate email accusing me of being out of touch with the common man. The usual comment is along the lines of «rich Republicans like you have no idea what it's like to...» fill in the blank.' [...]
I've added a new feature to the site, the Qwidget from Chat the Planet. Here's a bit about it:
The Qwidget is inspired by the simple realization that
we all like giving our opinion but writing a full blog post or
commenting on a blog often takes too much time' [...]
Last week I addressed a flaw I saw in the «moral hazard» argument for avoiding any action, no matter how justifiable, on the grounds that it might encourage future risk taking. My point, briefly, was that risk taking is actually something worth encouraging.
This week in The New Yorker [...]
American style democracy has come to Iraq:
Officials said on Sunday 7.5 million or 51 percent of the more than 14 million registered voters [voted].
From Saddam Hussein to enthusiastic self-government to American style apathy in 6 short years. It took us almost 200.
Looks like it is time for the troops to [...]
Much of the talk last year about how to address the developing financial crisis focused on the concept of «moral hazard». The concern about moral hazard led folks with no particular aversion to government spending to delay taking action at the earliest stages until the situation had snowballed beyond Lehman [...]
It's funny that today Lawrence Kudlow wrote a blog post (Tough GOPers Stand Up to Geithner; All GOPers Should Counter Keynesian Stimulus ) on the need to oppose Keynesian stimulus just as more news came out showing that bankers are playing a game of chicken with the the pro-Keynesians.' [...]
Editorial Page, New York Sun, 1897
We take pleasure in answering thus prominently the communication below, expressing at the same time our great gratification that its faithful author is numbered among the friends of The Sun:
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. [...]
'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that ST. NICHOLAS soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of' [...]
Today is Festivus, the Holiday for the Rest of Us.
You can proceed with the Airing of Grievances in the comments if you like, or take it elsewhere if you'd rather.
Sorry, I have no Festivus pole (Grievance #1) so I'm using the pink aluminum Christmas Tree I stole from Charlie Brown [...]
I put together this map of Christmas related locations on Google Maps. (Input for additional locations is welcome - please comment!)
I specifically included these locations from past years Christmas posts:
The warm corpse of John McCain told George Stephanopolous he didn't know if he would support Sarah Palin in a 2012 Presidential run:
«Listen I have the greatest appreciation for Gov. Palin and her family and it was a great joy to know them,» McCain said. «She invigorated our campaign [...]
An ugly Pontiac nobody wants to drive: $21,000.
A hybrid that only gets 20 mpg: $75,000.
A line of trucks starting at $20,345.
An army of lobbyists so they don't have to compete: Priceless.
There are some things even MasterCard can't buy. For those things, there's the taxpayer.
Thanks for reading. This post was [...]
Richard Nixon managed to die a few months before Ronald Goldman and Nicole Brown-Simpson and so didn't have the opportunity to actually comment on the Original Simpson Trial, but here's what he might have said:
...tainted evidence, even though a person is totally guilty, is a reason to get him off.
The [...]
Everyone is out hat in hand looking for a bailout, so let me throw in my two cents. Bail out bloggers. Pick the million most serious bloggers in the US and give loan them $500,000 each. This would be the last big bailout the economy needed. It would fix everything.
Congratulations are due to President-elect Obama and his supporters on a well earned and historic victory.
Senator McCain hit the nail on the head:
...his success alone commands my respect for his ability and perseverance. But that he managed to do so by inspiring the hopes of so many millions [...]
«You know I don't know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness»
Well, Senator, the simple answer is 1964. Since I know you're a little fuzzy on the math, you were 3 years old then.
In the introduction to [...]
He's gonna bring change and hope!
Now how much would you pay? How about a tax increase on income over $250,000?
He's gonna bring peace, love, understanding and a chicken in every pot!
Now how much would you pay? How about a tax increase on income over $200,000?
But wait, we're not done yet. [...]
Much was made Monday of a 2001 interview in which Barack Obama lamented the failure of the civil rights movement to bring about «redistributive change» to achieve «political and economic justice in this society.»
Of course, this sounds like socialism on its face. Redistributing the wealth is socialism, right? From [...]
Al the Banker told Congress yesterday that:
Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders' equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief.
Hang on, Al, I'm not.
Through the late 90s, Greenspan chided the markets for «irrational exuberance» while continuing to pump [...]
I want to see Barack Obama's birth certificate, too.
No, I don't doubt that he is a natural born citizen. I just think he's suffering from Algore Syndrome. Fuzzy math. Or more likely from a really screwed up sense of what constitutes «despicable» behavior.
The Weather Underground bombed the US Capitol [...]
Fox News just did a bit on other plumbers named Joe. The idea was, I suppose, that there are quite a few Joe the Plumbers, that being a plumber named Joe is about as ordinary and average as you can get.
The last Ordinary, Average Guy they interviewed about sharing a [...]
Some spokesman for ACORN is on Your World with Neil Cavuto, right now and he's spouting nonsense. Big surprise.
The specific nonsense that he just spouted is that «Republicans haven't spent a cent on voter registration» since sometime in the 1960s. He may, for all I know, be technically correct that [...]
I'm still waiting for the plumber who charged me $50 for the 15 minutes it took him to unclog a drain and break the pipe a year and a half ago to come back and fix it. Enough with the plumber hero worship. I don't want to live in Toiletistan. [...]
The Treasury Department is about to pony up $250 billion to recapitalize US banks in a move that was initially reported as «not voluntary,» though that phrase seems to have disappeared from online press reports. (Perhaps it was a mistake in an initial wire service report.) If the capital injections [...]
Liberals are pushing the idea that conservatives want Sarah Palin to drop out as Vice Presidential nominee. Let's be clear. They can cite two or three people like Jonah Goldberg that a few weeks ago they were decrying as Neocons. Conservatives don't want Sarah Palin to drop out. What conservatives [...]
A few notes on the troubles in financial markets:
A common sense conservative refrain is «If it ain't broke, don't fix it.» So now that the House of Representatives (including 90 some Democrats) have rejected the Mother of All Bailouts and the market is dealing with the news, before the next round of political tinkering we can take the [...]
The Obama campaign has set up a «truth squad» consisting of prosecutors, lawmakers and a sheriff in Missouri to enforce The One's version of The Truth. There has been literally no coverage of this in national media which are, admittedly, still abuzz with their latest Palin smears.
In a conference [...]
Folks, I'm puzzled by this from the normally sensible genius Lawrence Kudlow on his blog Kudlow's Money Politics:
Why should a successful bank — whether large, medium, or small — give up ownership and allow pay-caps for executives?
My immediate reaction was:
Why should a successful bank — whether large, medium, or [...]
If George Bush weren't President, he'd make a great finance professor. He just explained mortgage markets as well as anybody I've heard in the first quarter of a 13 minute speech.
I don't think Franklin Roosevelt gave as good a TV speech himself in 1929.
I was a little disappointed that he [...]
Depending who you ask, the cost of the government's mother of all bailouts currently stands somewhere just north of a trillion dollars. Throw in all the «we have to help Main Street» and that could double or more. Of course, of the Wall Street portion a big chunk will eventually [...]
Is anybody else disappointed? It looked like we were really close to Ben Bernanke firing up those cash filled helicopters. I was all ready to go scoop up enough cash to pay off my house or something.
Instead, it looks like the taxpayers are firing up helicopters full of cash [...]
I'm wondering whose resignation Jim Bunning will be calling for tomorrow. Last week he was calling for Bernanke and Paulson to resign after the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac seizure/bailout. At least Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were Congressionally chartered institutions, if not exactly government entities. I'm still not entirely clear who, [...]
Artist's impression of the Freedom Tower, also known as 1 World Trade Center.
A collection of photographs of those killed (except for 92 victims and [...]
It's literally impossible to get through a news talk program anymore without some guest using the phrase, «At the end of the day.» Who cares about the end of the day? The truth is, nothing gets done at the end of the day.
This is a problem that reaches across [...]
The hand of The Architect appears to be at work. After Missouri's August gubernatorial and Congressional primaries, I noted that Missouri has been the perennial «swing state» for 60 years and that things weren't looking good:
One thing is certain, with roughly 10% more voters turning out as Republicans [...]
It's morning in America. Wednesday night the Republican Party presented a candidate who understands that real change, real progress, comes from the bottom up, not the top down. A candidate who understands that the great things come from free people pursuing their own ends. It's morning in America and that's [...]
Some people have been questioning John McCain's judgment in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate. These folks are off the mark, questioning the political judgment of a guy that I'm rapidly coming to believe may be the shrewdest conservative politician since Ronald Reagan.
Perhaps the most important political consideration [...]
It looks like John McCain was right when he predicted that the US could safely remove troops from Iraq by the end of 2012. The US military is preparing to turn over security responsibility on Monday for Anbar province, arguably the most lawless, violent province in Iraq before the troop [...]
The US Secret Service is taking political prisoners.
They arrested a man in a Denver hotel carrying two rifles and two pistols in a «rifle type case» because Nancy Pelosi happened to be staying there. There's no indication that he was up to anything unusual. He had taken the guns to [...]
...you make Neville Chamberlain look competent and hawkish on military affairs/foreign policy. This from Chicago Boyz:
The radar-and-communications network that protected Britain from air attack during WWII was also an «unproven technology» when it was deployed: it is very fortunate that Neville Chamberlain, rather than Barack Obama, was Prime Minister [...]
Ah, it's that time again. It actually takes a real live shooting war to distract the media from speculation about who the Presidential nominees will pick as their running mates. Well, what fun would it be if I didn't weigh in with my thoughts.
The latest on Obama is that [...]
An invasion on the pretext of reunifying an ethnic minority with the Fatherland.
Threatening Poland.
I think the free world has been down this road before.
The Russians need to remember that Poland is a NATO member and the US commitment to defend our allies didn't end with the end of [...]
Several libertarian economic commentators have gotten caught up in a meme opposing drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf and other US locations. Somehow they've gotten the idea that the political rhetoric of «energy independence» somehow makes removing government regulations anti-freedom and inefficient. Maybe they're under the misapprehension that [...]
The Turner Report carried a news release today from the Missouri Republican Party on the opening of ten Victory Offices across Missouri. The Springfield office is off the square at 333 Park Central East, Suite 826, phone number 417-868-8557. The Joplin office is just off Rangeline on 32nd Street [...]
Missouri has voted for the winner in every Presidential election since 1904 except 1956, when Missouri voted by a very slim margin for the popular governor of a neighboring state, Adlai Stevenson of Illinois. From 1960 to 2004 the Missouri vote margin was within a percent and a half of [...]
I suppose this qualifies as news, but it sure comes close to the «dog bites man» category. The most corrupt Republican in the Senate got indicted for concealing «gifts» from a constituent that he «has maintained he didn't do anything for...that he didn't do for any other constituent or pro-Alaska [...]
So, life is imitating art with Arnold Schwarzenegger in the role of the villain from Demolition Man, Dr. Raymond Cocteau. Arnie just signed a law banning trans fats in California restaurants. They weren't on the list yet in 1993, but in the future California of that film, here's Lenina [...]
Some Republican politicians this year, having lost the moral high ground on fiscal and economic issues after wallowing in the mud of political corruption are, ironically, wrapping themselves more than ever in the rhetoric of values. The commonly used theme is that the United States is a «Christian nation» and [...]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant Congressionally chartered entities that act as market makers for the resale of mortgages in the United States, are supposedly in trouble. On the verge of failure, in fact, if the whiners in the media are to be believed.
The problem is that they're [...]
Phil Gramm, whose economic advice is one of the principle redeeming factors in a McCain candidacy, hasn't exactly been tossed under the Straight Talk Express for his remarks about the economy, but he's apparently been told that he's riding in the cargo area for a few weeks.
Democrats are outraged [...]
Like Saul on the road to Damascus, there's a bright light in my eyes...
The stage lights at Plaster Student Center at Missouri State University where four rows away the next President of the United States will speak in a few minutes.
Any nagging doubts about a McCain Presidency were resolved in [...]
So, apparently President Bush and Senator McCain are both listening to reason on offshore drilling. The political deal with the devil that Bush made to push drilling in Alaska, where it's politically popular, and not off the shores of the lower 48, where local politicians opposed drilling in their backyard, [...]
<sarcasm>
(Before you comment: [...]
In the race for the GOP nomination for Missouri Governor, voters have a clear choice: a lawyer who went to Washington and became part of the problem or an economist who stayed in Missouri and became part of the solution.
Kenny Hulshof represents the worst of what's wrong with Republican [...]
This year the nomination of John McCain was supposed to split the Republican Party and separate the libertarian and social conservative wings of the conservative movement. The Ron Paul campaign's efforts to take a Missouri delegate slate to the national convention, promised a series of floor fights from seating challenged [...]
Michelle Malkin, the pro-Roosevelt «conservative,» has become the latest unlikely champion of a new political correctness movement. She is up in arms because Rachel Ray, the spokesperson for an American institution, Dunkin Donuts, wore a scarf in a commercial. This new movement is living in territory bordering somewhere between political [...]
From the interviews I've heard Bob Barr's argument for running as a Libertarian is essentially that while the GOP is, in fundamental philosophy, a libertarian party, the GOP is broken. Given the lackluster choices in candidates at all levels this year, the absolute betrayal of conservative principles on spending over [...]
I made a Google Map to illustrate the path of Saturday's tornado, complete with the location of my house, my parents house and my job. I was just arriving at work, the farthest of the three points from the storm, when the warnings hit. It was all over within about [...]
