Barring some last minute surprise, the Democrats will pass health care reform legislation. I didn't think they would be able to do it. It looks like I was wrong. Whatever else one may think about the process and the policy, it represents a remarkable act of courage.
What explains this' [...]
Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen
Friendly old girl of a town
'Neath her tavern light
On this merry night
Let us clink and drink one down
Representatives of 193 concerned nations have been clinking and drinking in this friendly old girl of a town. They have also been pouring tons of carbon' [...]
The MSM has been hoping for a splintering of the Republican Party. They may yet get one. But just right now it is the Democratic Party that appears to be fracturing. Part of this may well be strategic. Howard Dean is screaming again, this time for Democrats to [...]
A Public Policy Polling survey of South Dakota was released today, and it contains some disturbing news for Congresswoman Herseth-Sandlin.
When it comes to her reelection next year it appears Herseth Sandlin will have a competitive challenge from Secretary of State Chris Nelson. She leads [...]
I really liked Night at the Museum. I saw it more or less by accident (I missed the movie I wanted to see), but I was delighted. It was as good as a movie can be without being in the least bit serious because it sold [...]
Intrepid reader Dan takes me to task for my last post, and we engaged in a slightly overheated exchange. No word yet on consequent earth tremors. I was a bit harsh in my reply, so Dan, I apologize.
Okay, so my sensational title involves a bit of exaggeration. Maybe that will draw them in. This story does read like a proposal for a made-for-SyFy Channel disaster movie.
AltaRock Energy has been trying to harness geothermal energy to generate electricity. The company has been drilling [...]
Matt Lewis contributes to the buzz about a possible Thune run for the Presidency.
He's not widely known nationally, which is both an obvious obstacle and perhaps a blessing in disguise: The national media has not turned him into a caricature. That may change in the future. Thune is [...]
There is a crisis, and it appears to be located in the U.S. Senate. My esteemed Keloland colleague and colleague Emeritus, David Newquist, has this:
John Thune has become the voice of the GOP–Groundless Obstinence and Petulance–according to the Huffington Post. He says his party will [...]
Barely. This might be a watershed on the historical landscape of the Obama presidency. Or not. Either way it's striking. From the Politico:
If White House officials were peeved at Gallup Poll for its reporting on President Barack Obama's recent slide to 47 percent approval — [...]
Remember when Obama was going to restore our relations with the rest of the world? Well, his Nobel Prize continues to do him and the United States a world of good. Consider this from the Guardian:
Barack Obama's trip to Oslo to pick up his Nobel peace award [...]
The advent of blogging is one of the most significant events in the history of modern journalism. This is not because blogging can replace traditional journalism. Many critics of blogging (including our esteemed Keloland colleague David Newquist) point out that bloggers are heavily dependent on [...]
While the Obama Administration was boycotting Fox News, National Public Radio was apparently engaged in its own campaign against Fox. From the Politico:
Executives at National Public Radio recently asked the network's top political correspondent, Mara Liasson, to reconsider her regular appearances on Fox News because of what they [...]
Conservative critics of the President's Afghanistan speech have generally applauded his decision to deploy more troops while writing scathingly about his timeline for withdrawing American troops. One argument is that by announcing an 18 month limit for the surge, he will encourage our enemies to lie [...]
In 2000 a book was published, briefly, accusing one of the most famous anthropologists of a number of grievous sins. The book was Darkness in El Dorado, by Patrick Tierney. It focused on the activities of Geneticist James V. Neel and Anthropologist Napoleon Chagnon in their [...]
If you don't like the weather in South Dakota, just wait a bit; it will change. Apparently much the same is true about our President. Originally the President had planned to attend the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change. Then the Administration said he would not be attending. Then he' [...]
Concentrating on its parts last night, I thought the President's speech was pretty good. I still like a lot of it, but a criticism is surfacing today that is hard to get around. Here is an example from Der Spiegel:
It was the least truthful address that he has [...]
It is tempting to rake the President over the coals once again on the duration and many false starts of his decision making process. How many weeks did it take to decide that troop withdrawal would begin in July of 2011 as opposed to June or [...]
Appears to have survived Chávezism, at least temporarily. From the New York Times:
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Porfirio Lobo, a longtime conservative politician, appeared to have won on Sunday in the Honduran presidential election, which many hoped could help the country emerge from the crisis caused by last summer's coup and [...]
One of the curious things about the healthcare debate in America is how little attention has been paid to healthcare systems in other countries. You might have thought we would be hearing about how public healthcare functions in Canada and Europe. That, after all, is what we will [...]
One hundred and fifty years ago this week, Charles Darwin's magnum opus was published in England. It was certainly one of the most important works of science ever written. If one listed the competition, it would include the seminal works by Copernicus, Newton, and of course [...]
In case you hadn't noticed, the esoteric deliberations of the Anthropogenic Global Warming Orthodoxy were exposed for all the world to see when someone hacked into the computers at the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Center. Now this hacking was an invasion of privacy' [...]
In a baffling act of candor, retiring NEA General Counsel Bob Chanin explains just what kind of organization the National Education Association is. From an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:
Despite what some among us would like to believe it is not because of our creative ideas. It is not [...]
Democrats and their allies formally moved their healthcare bill to the Senate floor tonight, rebuffing Republicans and ensuring that lawmakers will get a long and acrimonious debate on the overhaul of the healthcare system.
All 58 Democrats and the two independents who usually vote with them backed [...]
Just some random thoughts about He Who Blessed the Waffle.
President Obama went to China. He said lots of nice things about Chinese Civilization. He spoke to a small group of Chinese students, which event was blacked out on Chinese TV. He got nothing in terms of agreements or cooperation [...]
No. An internet rumor circulating to that effect, and it landed in my email. There is an interesting footnote here, but so far as I can tell there is no evidence at all that Nidal Malik Hasan had any connection to the Obama campaign or to the Administration.
Here is [...]
The scandal behind the Fort Hood shooting keeps getting deeper. It should have been clear to the army that Nidal Malik Hasan was a security risk long before he launched his personal jihad. Christopher Hitchens summarizes some of the details in his characteristically devastating piece at Slate.
On his [...]
Coming hard on the heels of David Brook's column on John Thune is this piece by the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza:
For months -- if not years -- the Republican/conservative smart set has been looking for a fresh face on which to hang their hopes and [...]
I have posted below on the billions that the Democrats are willing to spend to protect lawyers. The Washington Post raises the alarm on something else I have posted about: billions more spent to protect doctor's fees. The WaPo focuses on the right issue, as [...]
An environmental policy can aim to achieve one or both of two things. One aim is green marketing. It can sell us things that make us feel virtuous and chic. The other is that it can at protecting the environment both for our sake and for the sake of the [...]
Poking fun at Hugo Chavez is like shooting a really fat fish in a pretty small barrel, but, hey, it's Sabado, so why not? Here is what life in Venezuela is like, from Newsweek:
Venezuelans are inured to a certain amount of economic dysfunction. They already suffer some of' [...]
The President is not incapable of making a decision. From USA Today:
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, and four other alleged accomplices will be moved from the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay to New York City so they can [...]
Okay, so this is one of those say it first just in case it happens stories. But it is something for South Dakota to take notice of. From the New York Times:
As you may or may not know, Thune is the junior senator from South Dakota, the man who [...]
NPR reported this evening that the President had narrowed his list of options regarding Afghanistan to a mere handful, all of them involving the insertion of more troops. Finally a decision was forthcoming!
Not so fast. Politico reports this:
POTUS will not accept any of the Afghanistan war options presented [...]
Speaker Pelosi's healthcare bill passed in the House by 220 to 215. If three Congresspersons had switched sides, the bill would have been defeated. That is in a chamber dominated by Democrats. Of course, it may be that Pelosi had more votes than that; it's just that a lot of [...]
November 9, 1989, was the most significant historical moment since the end of the Second World War. Indeed, it is easy to argue that that was the date on which WWII really ended, as the division of Germany and the Soviet occupation of Central Europe meant [...]
The Fort Hood shooting story had quickly developed into a scandal. From the day of the shooting the U.S. Military and the FBI seemed more concerned with speculative threats to Muslim servicemen and women than they were with preventing terrorist attacks. From the LA Times:
Army Chief of Staff Gen. [...]
The U.S. House of Representatives today passed the most radical piece of legislation since the New Deal, a piece of legislation opposed by a majority of the American people. That takes guts, and I for one admire the Democrats on that score. How much courage it took is indicated by [...]
This is one of those films about which it is best to know nothing in advance. If complete ignorance is not feasible (one knows after all that one is going to see a movie), it were better not to know that it is both genuinely scary [...]
The outcome of an election is determined by two things: how people vote and which people vote. Most voters are not independent. If they vote, they usually vote for the same party. But there can be wild swings in how much of any demographic shows up at the polls. The [...]
First, dispense with a couple of questions beaten to a pulp by the press over the last twenty four hours.
Were the 09 elections a referendum on President Obama?
No. It is no doubt true that the Democrats would have done better if voter approval of [...]
The only good info I can get on the Maine elections comes from the excellent election page at the New York Times. The Maine state legislature, I gather, legalized same-sex marriage. Opponents got a referendum on this year's ballot: voting "yes" would repeal the law. Voting "no" would sustain [...]
Blanchard's Wise Predictions (and retroactively wise non-prediction)
As expected, yours truly correctly predicted the outcome of tonight's gubernatorial elections. As I said, Robert McDonnell crushed Creigh Deeds in Virginia. In American elections anything over 10 percent is considered a landslide. With 99% counted, McDonnell won [...]
GOP takes New Jersey State House
Fox Just Called It
GOP takes Virginia State House
McDonnell 60/Deeds 40 (81% reporting)
Republicans have also won the other two top posts in Virginia, Lt. Governor and Att. General. Early reports from New Jersey seem to favor Christie.Â
When John Roberts was confirmed as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2005, he noted "judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules, they apply them." Most Americans agree, but the liberal majority on Wisconsin's Supreme Court made [...]
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