And you smell like one too...

Is it the sought after missing link, a hyped up fossil, or a paparazzi photo of Nancy Pelosi walking by the night-light near her window?

The Audacity of Hope meets The Irony of Life

While listening to his speech on the radio, one couldn't help but notice the sound of a baby crying during some softsoap regarding abortion. The sound ran through Obama's Notre Dame speech like a thin red line of truth amidst his casual moral equivalency philosophy.

Eating their Own

This just in...Gingrich on Hannity show today speaking about Pelosi's judgement (or lack thereof):


Are the tides of hypocrisy turning? Even a liberal media seems to be catching on.


Then, from a while back...

Nothing to do with it

Logic has nothing to do with it.
Economics has nothing to do with it.
Political ideology has nothing to do with it.
The Constitution has nothing to do with it.
Tradition has nothing to do with it.
Moral grounding has nothing whatsoever to do with it.

It's power, and a willingness to do literally whatever it takes to get and keep it, and consequences to others be damned. "Whatever it takes" includes making promises you never intend to keep, changing stances on issues at a whim, distracting attention from the real story, ridding yourself of inconvenient allies (or appearing to do so), and using threats to silence enemies.

A fearsome enemy. A dangerous philosophy.

Hey! Teacher! Leave Them Banks Alone!

The WSJ:

The Obama administration has begun serious talks about how it can change compensation practices across the financial-services industry, including at companies that did not receive federal bailout money, according to people familiar with the matter.

headdesk headdesk headdesk.
It's not your business! Stay the hell out! Go! Shoo!

Repeat this after me: ANY employee's financial compensation at ANY private business is not the affair of the federal (or any other) government. It is between the board of directors, the management, and shareholders of the company. That's. It.

Government officials said their effort, which is just beginning, isn't aimed at setting pay or establishing detailed rules. "This is not going to be about capping compensation or micro-management," said an administration official. "It will be about understanding what is the best way to align compensation with sound risk management and long-term value creation."

I call BS. Sound risk management practices and long-term value creation are the purview of management and the board. That's. It. The government is never, ever, ever involved in creating "long-term value" of a private business. Why is this so hard for people to understand?

Is this really a surprise to anyone?

Hate to say I told you so, but I told you so. Not that that's any consolation.
Here we have yet another proponent of nationalized health care taking the single-payer health care system's cost/benefit analysis to its logical conclusion. To wit: the elderly won't be around long enough to repay the system for the inordinate amount of resources expended on extending their lives. Therefore, NO SOUP FOR YOU.

Where is the AARP on this issue? I thought Boomers, et al were supposed to be the greatest voting bloc ever! Why is there no outrage about this? Because it's too hard to imagine? Is it willful blindness? Because it's too many years down the road? Just because someone says NOW "no, that's not going to happen" doesn't mean it won't happen AT SOME POINT. It's the logical conclusion.

A side question: it's almost a given that medical tourism will rise if/when this happens. But what's the chances a parallel "underground" health system will arise in America? A "black market" in health care, so to speak - and I'm not talking about alternative medicines and marijuana here. I have no idea. The thought just occurred to me.

This is not what we signed up for

Our old friend Victor Davis Hanson on why Republicans lost their appeal:

The real cause of unhappiness with the Republicans was simply that they could not make a convincing case for conservatism to a changing electorate because so many of them were not acting as conservatives.
...
Conservatism is the political belief that best mirrors human nature across time and space; but because its precepts are sometimes tragic and demand responsibility rather than ever-expanding rights, it requires adept communicators — not triangulators and appeasers whose pleasure is only for the moment.

In summary, it's not conservatism that's out of political favor. It's that Republicans couldn't/wouldn't/didn't hold to those conservative and classical liberal precepts. Therefore, they were not good spokesmen for conservatism. When a charismatic figure speaking for the Left arises, it's not hard to understand why Republicans lost. Now, we'll see if the status quo holds in 2010 (and 2012).

The Only Choice

Link-heavy post over at Protein Wisdom on the coming nationalization (bastardization is a better word) of the American health care system. We've already talked here about the nationalized systems of Canada, Britain, and France, and how nationalization leads to rationing, which leads to picking winners (young and healthy taxpayers) and losers (the elderly and chronically ill). No one wants to admit this is going to happen. And, as always, it's marketed by Dems and others as "a moral right to quality health care" with bunnies and flowers and unicorns!
I was having a conversation with someone this past weekend. We were discussing the powers of the federal government vs. state and local governments. He said he thought state and local governments had too much power (speaking specifically of high property taxes and eminent domain laws). I said, at least you can leave a city or state if you don't like the way things are run. It's infinitely harder to leave the United State of America if you don't like the way it's being run.
You just have to deal with it, you try to change people's opinions, you try to get your guy voted in next time.
I used to want to live in Australia or Britain someday, but they are both further along the nanny-state path than we are - although we're running hard to catch up.

Levin on Courts, Conservatism, & History

Click here to listen or download the May 1 radio show. Interesting stuff.

See video interview below:

Forgetting Yet?

[Caption reads: 2,974 reasons for supporting "Enhanced Interrogation".]

Here is some old news that you probably didn't see. This man, a Polish geologist, was reportedly beheaded after this interview. Don't worry, no violence is shown in this video. I'll always make it a point to try and warn you first.


I recommend the following video documentary from HBO called "The Journalist and the Jihadi" about the fascinating and contrasting lives of Daniel Pearl and Omar Sheikh. Pearl was a journalist for the Wall Street Journal. You may remember hearing about him from the news soon after he was beheaded by terrorists in 2002. After watching these videos, are you going to tell me that this war is simply between soldiers or even just between governments? Are you still will to believe that this violence is diserved because of something America has done?

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14
Part 15