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 [...]
The recent sentencing of Former Congressman William Jefferson is notable, not only because it shows the face of government corruption, but also because it illustrates what looks to me like a growing disparity between society's willingness to punish financial offenders and its willingness to punish certain violent offenders. Jefferson [...]
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 [...]
White House Communications director Anita Dunn, best known, perhaps, for her joke about admiring Mao Tse Tung, is stepping down. After Glenn Beck aired a video clip of Dunn's joke (perhaps she could have varied her tone a little to tip the audience off that she meant it as [...]
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. [...]
Dr. Blanchard observes that healthcare bill that has just passed in the house is "the most radical piece of legislation since the New Deal." That in itself is worth noting, but what makes it even more interesting is the left's reaction to the bill.
One might expect the left [...]
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 [...]
New Jersey:
Chris Christie has crept back into the lead, narrowly, in late polls. One expects a lot of independent Daggett's support to break both ways. Some polls suggest that Corzine may get more benefit. However, it is unusual for an incumbent to get more than what his polls show. [...]
My readers might not suspect it, but I am quite fond of a lot aspects of modern liberal culture. I listen to NPR with enthusiasm. My favorite Washington D.C. neighborhood is the Gay enclave around DuPont Circle. I like sushi. I also think that being able to rent a bicycle [...]
Complaints about the "opinion side" of Fox News Channel usually mention Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly. Beck, of course, is a professional crank. He's good at, and there's obviously a market for it. O'Reilly is in fact pretty reasonable as opinion journalism goes. For all sorts of historical and functional [...]
The liberal Republican candidate Dede Scozzafava dropped out of the race for a New York House seat. She was running third, behind Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman and Democrat Bill Owens. Hoffman is in fact a Republican and this increases the chance that he will hold that seat for the [...]
The following is an expanded version of last year's Halloween movie post. If you are looking for something seasonal to rent or order from Netflicks, I am your man.Â
The U.S. has five holidays that are really celebrated: Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter, and Valentine's Day. Halloween comes second in terms of store [...]
The House healthcare bill, all 1,990 pages of it, has landed in the Republic's lap. I am guessing you could global warming back on track just by burning a few copies of it. Instead, we will burning through a lot more money. Here is one [...]
Friend and frequent interlocutor A.I. and I have been arguing about one particular battle in the White House war on Fox News. I am not sure whether it's worth fighting any more on the subject, but it does speak to the question of Fox's accuracy. I recounted the story [...]
The Pennsylvania Avenue Hamlet will, sooner or later, decide what his Afghanistan strategy is going to be. It seems unlikely that he will pull out altogether, so he is apparently trying to decide when he will decide whether to insert the troops that his handpicked [...]
Two governor's seats will be awarded on Tuesday, in Virginia and New Jersey. An unusual amount of attention is focused on these two races. The reason is that they are the first real test of political climate change. Almost a year ago a lot of [...]
Consider this my first Halloween Post. There have been a couple of well publicized chimpanzee attacks in the U.S. in recent years. A man was mauled in an animal shelter in California by two teen age chimps, and earlier this year a woman was attacked by her friend's' [...]
The New York Times reports that CNN has hit the basement floor. Hat tip to intrepid reader George Mason.
CNN, which invented the cable news network more than two decades ago, will hit a new competitive low with its prime-time programs in October, finishing fourth – and last – [...]
Fox News is not only a real news network, it is the only news network that is singularly necessary in today's media environment. If you don't believe me, ask the New York Times.
I often rake the Gray Lady over the coals and for good reason.' [...]
Well, the President may be dithering over Afghanistan, but he is not dithering over the H1N1 pandemic. From RealClearPolitics:
President Barack Obama declared the swine flu outbreak a national emergency, giving his health chief the power to let hospitals move emergency rooms offsite to speed [...]
When I first joined the faculty at Northern, I enjoyed the company of a couple of old school liberals. These guys were uncompromising leftists, of various degrees, but they were scrupulously respectful of people like me. I never heard them suggest that the conservative position was illegitimate.
The American left [...]
If you Google the coinage "Richard Milhous Obama" you get a lot of hits. President Nixon was famous for, among other things, having a enemies list. President Obama seems to have no problem with a five o'clock shadow, but he does have his own enemies list.
The health insurer Humana' [...]
My friend and fond interlocutor, A.I. has this to say about my previous Fiscal Madhouse post:
If being conservative has some connection with being Republican and managing debt is supposed to be the forte of both, history doesn't bear that out. Here are the stats on public debt under Republican' [...]
Corruption at the top of a political party gets the lion's share of attention. If you don't believe me, ask the lion of Harlem, Charlie Rangel. Corruption at the bottom often goes undetected, but it is far more pervasive, far more debilitating institutionally, and usually has' [...]
Well, Glenn Beck continues to score points against Obama Administration apparatchiks, if only because the later seem to go about pointing to the big red targets on their chests. In case anyone doesn't know it, White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who has taken point in' [...]
The chief concern of the United States Congress for most of the past year has been whether the Federal Government should enter the insurance business. While we have been thus at loggerheads over the public option, the Federal deficit for this year alone has swelled [...]
The Baucus Bill accounting involves big cuts in Medicare spending. So what is Congress doing right now? See Mickey Kaus for the grim details:
Mickey's Assignment Desk: Senate Dems quietly move a bill to countermand a 21% cut in Medicare fees for doctors, which will add $247 billion to the [...]
The Nobel Committee has been somewhat rattled by the reaction to their recent award, and has for a second time publically explained why President Obama deserved the peace prize. From the Politico:
Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee defended their decision to award this year's Nobel [...]
From Meagan McArdle at Atlantic:
The CBO projects $180 billion in "gross cost" of the coverage expansion--i.e., what the government will spend on Medicaid and SCHIP expansions, operating the exchanges, and subsidizing the purchase of standardized policies therein. It turns out that about $58 billion, or just about one third of that cost, [...]
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