"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler
by Smitty
DrewM at Ace of Spades HQ goes for the Einstein reaction to yet another hit on the Cosmic Credit card for infrastructure spending.
However, the notion of replicating the Lost Decade really gives us the Vapors:
How has this classic track affected Administration policy? Let us deconstruct. Continue reading 50 Gigabucks For Infrastructure Gives Us The Vapors →
by Smitty
A re-enactment of my previous arrival, in 2008.
There was some street work underway, requiring my wife, D., to park some blocks off. Mother-in-law was aware of a visit at some point from D., but no mention of me in tow. I walked up to the door alone.
I buzzed, and she opened in the cold morning air. She didn’t recognize me immediately, and assumed me part of the road crew. Seconds passed. Recognition.
Yeah, we’re terrible thespians, doing a lousy job, in the end, of setting aside our natural affection for the sake of capturing the surprise of the moment.
by Smitty
Then it occurred to me that Monday is a holiday. What more appreciative thing could I do for the loyal readers than bump the remainder of the queue a day so that there would be a little something available for the content-starved not otherwise occupied.
That’s your bonus Rule 5 Sunday, holiday edition, of a blustery day near Heidelberg, Germany. Time to head out and enjoy the varied delights. I just saw the bit about Stacy’s car accident. Thank Heaven he’s OK.
So says Lisa DePasquale. IYKWIMAITYD.
Really, I hate to be nitpicky, Lisa, but how can you interview Nick Gillespie and not ask about his leather jacket? Gillespie is the Fonz of libertarians.
(Hat-tip: Instapundit.)
by Smitty
Those on the right should answer firmly, in a positive way, any sort of negative talk concerning the Presidential health:
Almighty God, we pray that President Barack Obama should pass old, dignified, and full of years, calm in the knowledge of the abject falsehood of his policies.
We pray he grasp that foreign policy need be neither feckless nor ignorant of history.
We pray he grasp that domestic policy must be founded upon sane, mature economic principles, not mistaking the cart for the horse.
We pray he grasp that traditional American politics model human nature in an exceptional, optimal way; that FDR’s notion of “freedom from want” is the political equivalent of crack cocaine; and that a leader is someone with followers, while his current course is an increasingly lonely one.
In summary, we pray for a Road to Damascus moment for this President, so that the nadir of American history be reached before We The People usher into his office someone or something more effective, even a lowly pushbroom.
Amen.
Last night, just after 11, I decided to go to the store.
And hit a deer.
The car that my son worked so hard to fix?
The car I just spent $700 to fix?
Totalled.
The insurance probably won’t pay as much as we owed on it.
So . . . the trip I’d planned to Delaware today is canceled.
Probably no BlogCon, no 9/12.
Probably no more travel for weeks, even months.
Completed immobilized, just at the onset of the campaign season.
An irretrievable disaster.
I’m emotionally wiped out.
UPDATE: TERRORISM ON FOUR HOOVES!
. . . another liberal obsessed with race:
“We haven’t talked about the elephant in the room, and I don’t mean the Republicans: race. Changing demographics. Fear of a white minority. . . . Obama’s election has suddenly made many white Americans aware of the loss of a white majority. . . . That’s what this crazy summer has been all about. Anti-mosque construction. Anti-immigrant ravings. . . . That fear is very difficult for Obama to overcome.”
— Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“The accusation that conservatives are motivated by bad faith (mala fides) is essential to the Left’s attacks. Stigmatizing and marginalizing conservatives is much easier than debating them. Cogent arguments about policy become unnecessary to advancing the Left’s political agenda if they can dismiss its opponents as racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.”
— Robert Stacy McCain, Atlanta native who says the Journal-Constitution hasn’t been worth the paper it’s printed on since Lewis Grizzard died
And there’s this headline from CBS:
See? Liberals are “panicking,” and therefore the onus of “fear” must be projected elsewhere.
Levin is rapidly becoming talk radio’s most Web 2.0-savvy host. He’s got nearly 40,000 Twitter followers and more than 200,000 fans on Facebook. And he’s not only reading blogs, he’s arguing with bloggers:
Allahpundit over at Hotair, linking to like-minded bloggers here and there, argues, among other things, that he thought Beck was wrong when Beck said he’d rather have seen Obama as president than McCain. This is off the mark. I criticized Beck for the same thing. But comparing a conservative challenge to a liberal in a Republican primary to Obama v. McCain in a general election is incoherent. . . .
Read the whole thing. The subject is the Delaware GOP Senate primary, where Levin is Christine O’Donnell’s most influential supporter. Here’s his June 24 interview with Christine:
O’Donnell points out that she could beat Mike Castle in the Delaware with as few as 20,000 votes. Let’s parse those numbers just a bit. According to a CNN exit poll, 27% of Delaware voters in 2008 were Catholic, and 39% of those voted for John McCain. So roughly 11% of the Delaware electorate are Republican Catholics — probably solid pro-lifers — and in 2008, the turnout in Delaware was 408,000 voters.
So let’s say there are 40,000 pro-life Catholic voters in Delaware, and there have got to be at least 10,000 pro-life evangelical Protestants. If there are 50,000 pro-life voters in Delaware, that’s almost exactly the total turnout (50,237) in the 2008 Delaware GOP primary. But this is an off-year election and, in 2006, the total vote in the Republican primary was 14,386.
Do Delaware’s pro-life they know that Mike Castle gets only a 10% score from the National Right to Life Committee? Do these pro-life voters know that Mike Castle was one of only 11 Republicans who voted against a law that would have made it a federal crime to transport a minor across state lines for abortion without parental notification? Have they seen the pro-life Susan B. Anthony List’s endorsement of O’Donnell, when SBA president Marjorie Dannenfelser said:
“Unlike her primary opponent, who has an explicitly pro-abortion voting record, O’Donnell has expressed her strong determination to be a vocal advocate for women and unborn children in abortion debates on the floor of the U.S. Senate . . . A new women’s movement which affirms its original pro-life roots is making its way to the U.S. Senate and O’Donnell is one of its brightest new stars.”
Forget about everything else: This is about life vs. death, Christine O’Donnell is pro-life, and I know what pro-lifers are like. They vote. They will crawl through broken glass and scale a 10-foot fence with three strands of concertina wire on top just to get to the polls on Election Day, if you show them a candidate who will stand up for the right to life. We know who that candidate is, don’t we?