It would be funny if it weren’t such a bummer.
RELATED: At Newgeography.com, how the politics of narcissism killed the California dream. Boy is that piece right on the money. Give it a read.
Updates from February, 2009 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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Jehuda
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Jehuda
Some notes from the Independent Spirit Awards, held yesterday, from Anne Thompson.
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Jehuda
Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks regulating CO2 as a pollutant is ridiculous.
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Jehuda
It came to my attention last night that The Rhetorican’s mobile feed wasn’t loading. Feedburner changed the feed URL last week and I forgot to make sure the mobile site hadn’t been affected.
At any rate, I just fixed it and if you follow the blog on your cell or PDA it should load now. Sorry about that.
If you are new to the mobile site and you’d like to get it on your phone or PDA, click on the “blue hearts” logo on the left-side column of the screen (you may have to scroll up or down to spot it).
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Jehuda
Via Drudge: Nikki Finke says the Academy is sweating bricks over widespread indifference to Hollywood’s biggest night.
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Slate’s John Dickerson thinks Obama’s housing plan is on solid political ground…for now:
Some…people did engage in riskier behavior, signing up for no-money-down loans and living beyond their means. If those borrowers become the face of this plan, then maybe the fairness argument will gain broad currency and opponents of the plan will get more of a hearing.
Perhaps. But he also seems to think that Rick Santelli’s rant can’t possibly have much resonance because Santelli represents the financial elite and the media, which is probably what Robert Gibbs was counting on when he shot back at Santelli.
I think Dickerson has it all wrong on Santelli (and therefore that the administration does as well). Santelli was merely enunciating what many were already thinking. Who cares if he’s a media blowhard with the stench of derivatives all over his fancy suit? The quality of the messenger is not as important when the message is right. Simply put, there’s something to the Tea Party movement to which people respond. It’s not that a “taxpayer’s revolt” sounds so good. It’s just that the stimulus and housing plans sound really, really bad.
RELATED: Santelli responds to Gibbs (video).
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Jehuda
I thought he said he’d do away with the failed policies of the past. I guess not:
President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.
So the plan is to reduce defense spending (in wartime, no less) and to raise taxes on the most productive members of society. Democrats never learn…
(via Drudge)
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Jehuda
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Tokyo Electric to build solar plant in California.
I wonder: do they know what it means to run a business in California?
Who knows? Maybe alternative energy projects get a nice tax break from the State. They do get one from the Feds.
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Jehuda
The WSJ has the understatement of the year: Obama’s Promises and Reality Collide.
That’s fiscal reality they’re talking about, but the same goes for the foreign policy and national security realms. Although these are areas where it seems likely Obama knowingly emitted promises with an expiration date: February 20, 2008.
If reality is putting the brakes on Obama’s domestic agenda, then we are all lucky. If Obama never meant to be the “un-Bush” as to national security, I guess we’re lucky for that, too. But it also just makes it harder to trust the guy.
UPDATE: On a related note, Obama administration tries to kill Bush e-mail case.
Two advocacy groups suing the Executive Office of the President say that large amounts of White House e-mail documenting Bush’s eight years in office may still be missing, and that the government must undertake an extensive recovery effort. They expressed disappointment that Obama’s Justice Department is continuing the Bush administration’s bid to get the lawsuits dismissed.
Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, noted that President Barack Obama on his first full day in office called for greater transparency in government.
The Justice Department “apparently never got the message” from Obama, Blanton said.
Suckers! That’s because the message was never meant to be taken seriously. If these lawsuits against the Bush administration were to be successful, the resulting legal precedent could later be used against the Obama administration. And that’s something Obama probably doesn’t want. Who in his position would?
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Jehuda
Violence is not obscenity, said the Court.
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Jehuda
THR: The AMPTP gives SAG its final offer.
Yes, I know it’s old news by now. Sorry. It’s been a busy day.
Nikki Finke has more.
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Jehuda
One whole month in office and still no late night Obama humor.
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Dear Readers and Visitors:
As I have to go out of town for a few days starting next Monday, I endeavored last week to recruit guest bloggers so that The Rhetorican stays current during my absence. (More …)
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Jehuda
If true, it will have little to do with the “re-imagined” BSG series on Sci-Fi.
Weird. A re-imagining after the re-imagining? Stay tuned.
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Jennifer Rubin: There’s still time to turn back, Mr. President.
Mr. President, if you won’t do it for the country, will you do it for your re-election? Seriously, it’s looking like instant hubris’s gonna get someone…
Plus, plans for the Chicago Tea Party are picking up steam. Everyone’s invited. Where, you ask? At the ballot box, of course!
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Jehuda
Food Court Revolutionaries: Interrupted Suspended!
Ha! “The Man Wins!”
UPDATE: “they have the support of Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky.”
I’m sure they do. Unfortunately that support could not make up for the emptiness the students felt once NYU cut off the electricity and their access to the internet. At that point, their will to fight was on its last legs. It was all downhill from there. I can hear it already: “You got suspended from college for what? You are kidding, right?”
To sum up: “a big failure marked by muddled thinking and incoherent goals, and completed with a total lack of any progress towards the laughably unrealistic set of ‘demands’ the protesters set forth.”
ANOTHER UPDATE: The beginning of the end.
Plus, the “movement” earns widespread mockery and derision for its efforts: “The general consensus right now among the student body is that they are a bunch of idiots.”
And “This is not Students for a Democratic Society. This is – ooooh – the Take Back NYU! campaign. Take back NYU? From whom? Klingons? Are aliens manipulating the film class syllabus?”
When you start your list of demands by declaring “an occupation of this space” you can’t expect people to take you seriously.
Sad. It doesn’t even make for a good Dog Day Afternoon
-type movie. That’s how lame these kids are.
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Jehuda
Via Instapundit: “Knee-jerk liberalism” is alive and well, and not devoid of mind boggling irony when the knee-jerk reaction evinces racism. It would be funny if it wasn’t so lame. At that point it simply becomes Jerk Liberalism.
Not that the Gay or Daily Kos communities are especially afflicted by this paradox, although the Kos site often seems more a forum for emotional outburst than intelligent discourse.
I suppose – and I might be wrong – that the problem is not so much with Left Wing politics as it is with the fact that so much of our Left Wing politics is about feeling and not about thinking.
Ask a member of the NYU Board of Trustees. They’ll tell you a thing or two about that.
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Jehuda
What took the guy so long? He was never shy about criticizing Bush. And I knew back then it couldn’t just be a party affiliation thing. Clinton likes attention. And what better way to get it?
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Jehuda
It’s not a sit-in. It’s not a stand-off. It’s a Poser-fest: Take it from an NYU alumnus. This whole NYU protest is sad and embarassing. Can these students tell the difference between desires and rights? Can they tell the difference between a private university and a state university?
There are mechanisms to make requests from school management in a civilized fashion, people.
Plus, how about a little focus? They want budget transparency and – while you’re at it – throw in some scholarships for Gaza students and “new programs that encourage social and environmental responsibility”. Fine, except that – I assure you – the whole NYU campus is an infomercial for social and environmental responsibility already!
An irreverent Gawker has more here and here.
NYU’s online student paper is also covering the story.
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Jehuda
The meme of the week appears to be Democratic self-destruction. It’s Burris this, Murtha that – even the Stanford Financial Group seems to be focusing our attention on the rise of a New Culture of Corruption. But whether all this will amount to a Democratic fall from power in 2010 is not certain. However, the risk of a Democrat implosion is real and the Dems know it.
But let’s give the situation its proper perspective. If any self-destruction results, it will be more like the death of Gollum than that of The Exorcist’s Father Karras: it’s their own drive for power that has put Democrats at risk. Allegations of corruption have been hounding Democrats for months now. And yet, Pelosi and Reid have done nothing to even simulate a concern over Congressional ethics. On the contrary, they have largely turned a blind eye to all this after themselves rising to power on their justifiable clamor against a Republican culture of corruption.
Then the Inaugural comes and the Democrats triumphantly sport one of their own as President for the first time in eight years. Ironically – as I pointed some weeks ago – this is a President whose administration’s stumbles have only helped to highlight the Democrats’ shortcomings.
When you add into the mix the potential cost of whatever unpleasantness lurks in the unpopular Stimulus bill and the Republicans’ sudden return to their principles, you know the Democrats’ worries have only begun. But that’s what happens when you forget that there are no permanent victories in politics.
UPDATE: As if Obama hadn’t done enough already to make Democrats more vulnerable, you can bet that if there’s a Chicago Tea Party, it will be held at the ballot box.
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Jehuda
…in Teen America: High School students in Phoenix immune to Obama Magic.
[UPDATE: the student quotes have been removed from the original article!! Maybe someone is trying to protect the students from some self-appointed representative of Obama's Thought Police? (Via Instapundit) But no worries. Drudge has all the quotes at the link below.]
UPDATE: The story is back up as originally published, quotes and all.
“Even though I don’t support him, I think it’s cool he’s here,” said Miller, 18. “I just don’t believe all the things he’s telling us. His goal is just too big and broad.”
Give him a few more months. It won’t be as cool.
These kids are brave after what happened to that other guy in Oklahoma City.
UPDATE: That server is a little slow. Drudge reposted the story here.
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Jehuda
How about some free expression “sensitivity training” to go along with the diversity one?
OKC officer pulls man over for anti-Obama sign on vehicle.
And it didn’t end there. How’d you like it if the Secret Service paid you a visit for, say, your anti-Obama bumper sticker? And where were these cops – or the Secret Service – when people were wearing Abort Palin t-shirts? (Presidential candidates get Secret Service protection, too)
Via Drudge.
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Jehuda
NYT: E.P.A. Expected to Regulate Carbon Dioxide.
I remember when this all started. It’s actually quite silly:
The environmental agency is under order from the Supreme Court to make a determination whether carbon dioxide is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare, an order that the Bush administration essentially ignored despite near-unanimous belief among agency experts that research points inexorably to such a finding.
Would that be the carbon dioxide that animals exhale and plants breathe? They need a study to determine whether a building block of life is a pollutant that endangers public health and welfare?
I’m sure the EPA will reach whatever conclusion the politics of its mandate demands.
Our only hope is that these new regulations would be even more onerous in a depressed economy than in a good one, so they won’t be terribly popular with most thinking people – and crafty politicians – right now.
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Jehuda
I’ve made much noise about the kumbaya Left’s failure to whine about Obama’s Afghan Surge, but only to point out their double standards.
So I want to make one thing clear: I want us to be victorious there. Other’s don’t, of course; and if they can pressure Obama into surrendering in Afghanistan, they will do it, no matter the consequences.
Obama – as far as I can tell – is vulnerable to pressure of this sort. He likes to be liked. I hope he understands that it’s better to lose an election than losing a war, to echo the words of his once-opponent John McCain.
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Jehuda
Wow. Did the Brits grow a pair all of a sudden? Their government won’t let Geert Wilders visit but the House of Lords has agreed to extradite “Osama Bin Laden’s right hand man in Europe” back to Jordan.
I wonder if the story will get any more coverage, as opposed to the one about the Muslim beheading in Buffalo.
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Jehuda
Wow. And to think that Neo-cons were chastised by the punditry merely for embracing the phrase “Axis of Evil”: State Department official suggests we bomb North Korea during their upcoming missile test-launch.
And that’s a diplomat, mind you, straight out of Hillary “New Tone” Clinton’s State Department.
Who’s minding the store over there? Interns?
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Jehuda
A Democrat darling laundering drug money. Now this is custom made for the conservative 527s.
Via Drudge.
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Mexico is now the kidnapping capital of the world?
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You know trust in politicians is at its lowest when a statement of support for the President has to be qualified with the words “if true”.
Sadly, I think it’s a safe bet that the Professor is simply typing out what we are all thinking. Even Obama boosters aren’t immune: we are all skeptics now!
I never thought I’d say this, but Bill Clinton inspired much more confidence in me than Obama does. And I’ve always had serious reservations about Bill Clinton’s sincerity about anything.
Sigh. It’s going to be a long 4 years…(at least I hope it’s only 4 years).
UPDATE: No Fairness Doctrine? Dan Riehl is beyond mere skepticism on this one.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Obama’s perception by public “sky high”. Sure it is, if you are willing to listen to that America.
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Jehuda
Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: “Rent” Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg.
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All this Burris stuff coming out all of a sudden. What gives? Is he going to be pressured into resigning now that he’s voted for the Stimulus?
(H/T: Instapundit)
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Jehuda
The lobbyist “revolving door” is out. Enter the journalist “revolving door”: the Obama administration already has six reporters on the payroll.
No, not Godfather-style. They all quit their journalistic careers to work for the federal government.
Michelle Malkin says it’s “Obama’s own little MSM Bailout Program.”
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Yes, that Nate Silver.
He predicted the election results. Will he get the Oscars right, too?
Via Kausfiles.
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Variety: Elton John’s production company readying Pride and Predator, a sci-fi thriller/comedy-of-manners combo.
What a great idea! That’s certainly the perfect way to get me to watch a period costume drama. And it looks like the concept is catching on in other media as well.
(Thanks for the tip go to Dr. Fiancee, who likes to read Jane Austen when she’s not monitoring the latest developments in national security matters at CulperRing335)
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Jehuda
Via Drudge: Syria’s Assad wants to be friends with the USA.
Can we trust Syria?
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Jehuda
It’s the Obama surge! Let’s see how long we have to wait before “World Can’t Wait” or Sean Penn and like-minded Hollywood folk start screaming bloody murder.
Oh, wait. Obama is a Democrat so it’s ok.
But seriously now, STRATFOR takes a look at Obama’s emerging foreign policy here.
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Jehuda
Set Free: The two former border agents who were sent to prison for shooting a drug smuggler on the butt and then trying to cover it up.
