"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
“I get that this kind of explanation is part of the reason why people hate lawyers,” says a Red State blogger trying to defend Reince Priebus.
So if you hate lawyers, Reince Priebus is probably not your first choice for RNC chairman.
My biggest problem with Reince Priebus? The man can’t even decide what side of the “I before E” rule he’s on!
It’s fun calling Insty by his formal title and, yes, his New York Post column about property rights is excellent. Columbia University used eminent domain to seize private property and shut down two small businesses in Harlem. It was decidely not consensual.
“He was the man destined to save this country from his predecessor’s failures. He was the man who would end the war in Iraq, finish the war in Afghanistan, and shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He was the man charged with rescuing the faltering American economy. He was the man who would usher in a post-racial era in an allegedly inherently racist American society. And he was the man who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based not on tangible accomplishment, but simply upon these very expectations. On all of these accounts, President Obama has been a striking failure. . . .”
This video has proven so popular since I first posted it Dec. 6, I decided to post it again, just so you can enjoy our cute kids:
Thanks to everyone who has already hit the tip jar and, as for the rest of you Scrooges, what are you waiting for?
Because Larry Flynt thinks rape is cool!
Well, maybe I paraphrase slightly, but Larry Flynt’s argument very much resembles the arguments of Michael Moore, and we know where he’s coming from, right? Sister Toldjah isn’t impressed.
Why are there no deep-pockets donors offering me $50,000? Probably because I never leaked any national security secrets. Or raped any Swedish socialist women.
On the other hand, Julian Assange didn’t get any recognition from The 8th Annual Right Wing News Conservative Blog Awards. Nice to get some recognition.
Now if I can just get some of y’all to hit the tip jar . . .
After taking a look at the congressional calender for 2011, the newly elected Congressman from Florida’s 22nd District sent a letter to Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Page 1 and Page 2 in PDF format) and issued this press release:
Congressman-Elect Allen West has questions surrounding the Congressional calendar released last week and has written a letter to House Majority Leader-Elect Eric Cantor to reflect those concerns.
“As we know, Congress needs to work to create jobs, reduce the deficit, strengthen our economy, limit the size of government and contend with a plethora of national security issues,” West said. “How are we to do that when, among other things, we start off being in session only ten days the entire month of January?”
Congressman-Elect West is concerned with the fact that Congress is only in session 123 days, only one-third of the entire year. He points out that Congress will not even meet the mark of 90 days in session until September of 2011, just a matter of days before the end of the Fiscal Year.
“I am sure we both agree that the issues before us today require the members of Congress to go beyond what has been the accepted practice in the past to meet the challenges of the future,” West writes to Cantor.
West is also concerned with the “retreats” in the month following the swearing in – some of them taxpayer funded- for members of Congress. Congressman-Elect West has already decided he will not attend at least two of the retreats.
“We have to show the American people we are going to be different than years past,” West said. “We are there for one reason and one reason only, to work for the constituents of the districts we are so privileged to represent. I hope that if it becomes clear that we are not meeting the promise we made to the American people, leadership will modify the schedule in order for us to accomplish the important task we have before us.”
News coverage from CNN, National Journal and The Hill.
Defeating Harry Reid’s pet pork package gets Republicans off on the right foot going into the 112th Congress:
Senate Republicans sought to build momentum on Friday after successfully forcing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) to beg off a $1.1 trillion omnibus spending bill.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, wrote a valedictory e-mail to GOP supporters cheering the death of the omnibus bill.
“You did it. Facing pressure from you, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced Thursday night he was withdrawing the Democrats’ last-minute, 2,200-page-long, $1.1 trillion spending bill,” Cornyn wrote, crediting Republican wins in Senate races this fall for the victory.
Reid pulled the spending bill from the Senate floor after Republicans signaled they would not support the legislation . . .
The defeat last night of the OmniPorkulus bill, as the Boss Emeritus calls it, gives us a chance to revisit the long-held — and long-true — belief that both parties are equally addicted to pork-barrel spending.
Ed links to a column by Byron York that argues Republicans really did get the message of the Tea Party movement and the midterm elections.
Meanwhile, the passage of the tax “compromise” leaves liberal Ezra Klein perplexed:
The tax deal passed last night, and without changes. Liberals don’t really like it. Conservatives don’t really like it. Even people who supported the deal — myself included — don’t really like it. It’s tempting to say that this broad spectrum of gnawing dissatisfaction just shows that the bill was a true compromise, with everyone getting a little and giving up a bit. And maybe it was. But it was a compromise that said something bad about our political system, not something good: It said we’re operating without a clear theory of what’s gone wrong in the economy, or how to fix it.
Who is this “we,” Kemosabe? “What’s gone wrong in the economy” is the collapse of a speculative bubble, followed by a misguided attempt to re-inflate the bubble through Keynesian interventionism. As I tried to tell all you genius experts two years ago: “It Won’t Work.”
As for “how to fix it,” the answer is equally simple: Stop!
Stop the endless deficit spending, stop the endless extension of unemployment benefits, stop trying to “fix” the housing market with further interventions, stop trying to “fix” deflation by having the Fed buy Treasury debt, stop the government takeover of the health-care industry — stop just about everything that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have been doing since January 2009.
Once you’ve stopped doing the wrong things, that will be about half of the solution. The other half of the solution — actually doing the right thing — will probably have to wait until January 2013, when the next president is sworn in and we rid ourselves of Barack Obama, who now looks much less like the messiah Ezra Klein once worshipped and a lot more like the Second Coming of Jimmy Carter.
UPDATE: Ed Driscoll notes that ObamaCare is the next big target in GOP sights.
Da Tech Guy goes door-to-door and discovers Tea Party sentiments pervasive among small businessmen:
. . . mechanics, car dealerships, accountants, dry cleaners, manufacturers big and small, tire stores, restaurants, diners, barber shops, liquor stores, dentists and doctors, car washes, computer repair guys, investment specialists and even tutors. . . .