Jun 162009
 

I guess the old saying is no longer operative. Lefters used to say that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. It looks like Gerald Walpin may have broken the wrong egg.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A White House lawyer says President Barack Obama fired the watchdog for federal AmeriCorps programs because he was “unduly disruptive” and engaged in “trouble and inappropriate conduct.”

And here I thought it was the job of watchdogs to be disruptive.

Back when Rod Blagojevich was in the news, it reminded people that President Obama had come out of the corrupt Chicago political machine. But there were those who pointed out that President Truman came out of the corrupt Pendergast machine, but had managed to stay clean himself. So why couldn’t Obama do the same?

I don’t have the answer as to why he couldn’t, but with the handling of Gerald Walpin it has become apparent that Barak Obama is no Harry Truman.

WSJ editorial here.

Jun 142009
 

George Bush had his Colin Powell, and now Barak Obama has his Larry Summers.

Colin Powell sacrificed his integrity to give an eloquent speech at the UN, assuring the world of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s weapon’s of mass destruction. He of course had lots of doubts about it even as he spoke.

And now Larry Summers has told has said President Obama is a defender of free markets.

President Barack Obama’s chief economist on Friday defended White House economic policies against criticism that they amounted to “a kind of back-door socialism.”

In a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers said Mr. Obama’s interventions “will go with, rather than against, the grain of the market system.”

This of course is complete crap and he knows it, but just as with George Bush, the president needs his people to say things like that.

Summers is now going to have to live with this blot on his record just as Colin Powell has had to live with the one on his.

(I must admit that I was slightly swayed by Powell’s speech at the time. I am not in the least swayed by Summer’s speech. Neither of these men is among my favorite politicians, but I respect both of them enough to be saddened by what they had to do.)

Jun 132009
 

When the subject of hate-crime legislation comes up, there are always advocates who say, No, it’s not going to outlaw hate speech or hate thought.

If that’s true, then we should expect those people who advocate hate-crime laws to do the following:

  • Condemn the existence of the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the legislation under which it operates, which explicitly does try to regulate hate speech, as can be seen in this non-debate debate on CTV. (And by the way, what about those people who criticized George W. Bush for paying no attention to other countries, and those who advocate the use of other country’s legal decisions as precedents for our own? Why aren’t they complaining about the lack of news coverage of this issue in Canada?)
  • Propose legislation that affirms that hate speech is a cherished and protected right under our Constitution.
Jun 082009
 

I posted this in the comments section of a WSJ article titled “Going ‘Paperless’ to Thwart Scalpers.”

I love scalpers, too. They don’t suck anyone’s blood. They don’t steal anything. I decide if I like the asking price, and if so, I pay it. If not, not. Usually it’s not, because my wife doesn’t want me spending a lot of money on tickets for sporting events, even though she’s the sports fan in the family. But once in a while I make use of a scalper’s services. It’s unlike Obama’s cars, where you have to pay whether or not you want one. Now THAT is something like stealing. Scalpers, on the other hand, perform a valuable public service. They should be held up as heroes to the younger generation. In fact, they deserve one of my not-so-famous Leviathan Anklebiter awards.

If people have emotional problems with the idea of free-choice prices, they should get therapy rather than keep other people from making their own choices.

Jun 042009
 

This is just creepy. Yes, a speech can be an important and influential event, but for it to have such an impact so quickly? And how would a reporter have any possible way of knowing these things without doing extensive polling?

Why not just tell us what Obama said and what the crowd reaction was? That’s all we really know for now.

Washington Post headline: “Muslims Seem Won Over by President; U.S. Adversaries Unmoved.”

CAIRO, June 4 — President Obama’s choice of Egypt as the site of his address to the Muslim world endeared him to Egyptians, who are always proud to host a foreigner and show off their history.

That he came to downtown Cairo, instead of heading to the Sinai beach resorts where the country’s diplomatic gatherings are often held, told them he was serious about connecting on a personal level.

When he sprinkled his speech with words from the Koran and balanced support for Israel with a strong call for a Palestinian state, the deal was closed.

Maybe the Washington Post now hires clairovoyants as reporters?

Jun 042009
 

Well, yes, I imagine he is. In the same category:

  • Bill Gates appears open to making money from software
  • Ann Coulter appears open to critizing “liberals.”
  • Ford Motor Company appears open to making some cars
  • The Reticulator appears open to making snarky comments about Obama’s lapdog media

Obama appears open to some health insurance mandates” (LA Times headline)

Jun 032009
 

I suspect that Peter Wallsten and Robin Abcarian are two journalists who are just making stuff up — or else printing stuff that President Obama makes up. Here is some of what I mean.

In calling last month for “common ground” on abortion, President Obama launched his search for an unlikely political sweet spot — a popular stance on an issue that has long been dominated by extremes.

This is nonsense. Before Obama came along with his extremist anti-choice, pro-abortion policies, the country had reached an uneasy truce in the abortion wars — a compromise, even. Obama may have said at some time that he is looking for a common ground on abortion, but he says a lot of things. Reporters should keep in mind that this is the same guy who said he is not running an auto company.

But the slaying Sunday of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller has raised the level of mistrust between the very factions that the White House has been trying to bring together.

How do these reporters know the level of mistrust has been raised. And how could the killing of Tiller do that even if it happened, when everybody except a few lone wackos wants his killer to be brought to justice the same as any other killer? The killer didn’t represent the anti-abortion crowd any more than President Obama’s extreme views represent the vast majority of those Americans who want abortion to be legal.

Tiller’s death is a “massive setback” in the search for common ground, said Cristina Page, a New York City author and abortion rights advocate. “It’s sort of like having a family member murdered and then being asked to make nice with the assassin’s family. It’s unnatural.”

Gee, how McCarthyite of her. Nice built-by-association in that “assassin’s family” phrase. OK, so maybe Obama isn’t the only extreme wacko on the pro-abortion side.

Ah, in reading further into the column, I see that the two journalists are at least good enough to quote some people who don’t buy their thesis in paragraph one.

There’s more, but I gotta run.

Jun 022009
 

Not only does Obama have no exit strategy in his war on capitalism, but he has his own equivalent of a WMD rationale. This one is for a war on another front. Now he’s warning about vague cybersecurity threats as a rationale so he can be given great power to somehow protect the internet from these terrible threats.

And it’s ironic that on the same NetworkWorld page with an article that tries to drum up support for Obama’s newest war is this item over in the “Most Read” sidebar: “20 years after Tiananmen, China containing dissent online.”

Jun 012009
 

“The Obama Administration has been whispering to the press that it could start selling its stake within a year to 18 months, and that it hopes to be out of the business entirely in five years.” (–WSJ Review & Outlook)

Yeah, and the Bush administration once hoped to be out of Iraq quickly, too. But “hope” is not the same as an exit strategy.