Frontiers of Entitlement: “Having a satellite dish ‘is a human right,’ says European court”.
Get yours quickly, then, while you still can…
Updates from August, 2011 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
Will the Tea Party Get Blamed For This, Too? Treasurys Rally as U.S. Debt Remains Go-To Haven.
They should take credit for it. If world investors are still seeing U.S. Treasury Bonds as the place to park their money, must be because they see us putting our fiscal house in order sometime in the future. And the strongest voice in Washington that is at all calling for fiscal sanity in our national finances is that of the Tea Party movement.
I just don’t see the Left or Democrats coming forth with any plans in that regard. In fact, as we well know, Democrats controlled Washington for two full years from 2008 to the end of 2010. House, Senate, and White House (and the Senate with a filibuster-proof majority to boot). And yet, they passed no budget and no “balanced approach” plan of tax hikes and budget cuts during that time. Zero.
Some might argue that Washington Dems were too focused on passing Obamacare to worry about a budget or addressing the deficit. But they’d be wrong. Democrats on the Hill chose to leave such decisions to the incoming Republican majority. They even told us so. They simply abandoned their responsibilities.
At that time, Obama could have used his bully pulpit to urge Democrats to pass a budget and address the deficit with Geithner by his side doing the same. But that didn’t happen, either.
It’s a record of failure and negligence that I’m sure they’d like us to forget. Memories are short, but not that short…
UPDATE: Related: NARRATIVE FAIL: “The administration’s knee-jerk responses are somewhat inconsistent: if S&P was wrong to downgrade the debt, and the downgrade was based on a mathematical error, then it is hard to see how the downgrade can also be the Tea Party’s fault. “
Inconsistent is putting it mildly…
MORE: On the other hand: China not very confident (via Insty).
Can’t blame them. The truth of the matter is that – bright future or not – if anything can go wrong in between now and then, it will.
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
Standard & Poor’s President Deven Sharma: The Man Who Downgraded America.
Plus other good stuff from the WSJ blogs…
-
Jehuda
Happy bloggiversary, Prof!
-
Jehuda
Good times: S&P downgrades Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, too.
-
Jehuda
Does Powerline’s Steven Hayward read The Rhetorican?
I doubt it, but obviously great minds think alike.
That’s a great idea he suggest at the link…
-
Jehuda
REMEMBER THEM: 30 U.S. servicemen perish in Afghanistan chopper crash.
They were all members of SEAL Team Six, too. RIP.
-
Jehuda
Goodbye Euro? “The cost of saving the euro has just risen and it is a price that no one may be willing to pay.”
UPDATE: Goodbye America? S&P downgrades USA’s credit rating.
MORE: Is your credit rating better than it was 4 years ago? Yes it is, for Governor Perry’s constituents.
-
Jehuda
Hot Air: Hypocrisy, irony, and the New Civility.
You see, some people are not uncivil when they act uncivil. Especially when they are part of something as civil as the Restoring Civility project.
I know. It’s a little convoluted. But that’s how doublethink goes…
-
Jehuda
The web will be 20 years old tomorrow.
-
Jehuda
Attack of the ‘Mad Men’ Clones.
UPDATE: Related: Changes behind the scenes of The Walking Dead and AMC’s growing pains.
-
Jehuda
Greta Van Susteren: Message to Senator John Kerry: QUIT WHINING.
Come on, Greta. He’s an effete, limousine liberal. That’s like asking him to stop breathing…
-
Jehuda
Pawlenty On the Warpath: Target: Bachmann?
R.S. McCain reports from Iowa…
-
Jehuda
Someone didn’t get the memo: Video: Dem Strategist Calls Ryan Cuts Plan “Courageous”.
At first I thought I read “outrageous”. But no. “Courageous” is right. Civility!
UPDATE: Related: Invoking the spirit of political assassination in Wisconsin. But it’s a Lefty yelling, so it’s ok…
MORE: I realize the video link is from back in April, but it caught my eye because I wasn’t expecting a Democrat strategist of all people to refer to anything Ryan as courageous.
-
Jehuda
The Magic Is Gone: Actor Kal Penn returns to Hollywood after two-year stint at the White House: “Penn is half of the Harold and Kumar stoner duo that is a contemporary answer to Cheech and Chong, but in real life he’s a bright guy who’s working on a graduate certificate in international security at Stanford and who once served as a visiting lecturer in Asian American studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Penn will now try to reclaim his career with A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas“.
You get the sense that our decrepit Ruling Class turned him off somehow. Not that Hollywood and that elite don’t intersect, but showbiz pays better. Plus – even at its most overbearing, banal, and elitist – Hollywood is a lot more popular these days than anything coming out of D.C….or America’s second coming of Camelot.
-
Jehuda
Governor Christie gets a standing ovation from…Lawrence O’Donnell?
Even a broken clock…
-
Jehuda
DIY Escape Tools: a gallery of prison contraband from jails around the world.
Photography by Marc Steinmetz.
(via Geekosystem)
-
Jehuda
Matthew Dickinson: An Open Letter to Hillary Clinton.
-
Jehuda
Ed Driscoll proved right? Rise of the Planet of the Apes Delivers.
A franchise reboot that works. Whodathunk?
I tend to be more pessimistic, maybe because I’m exposed to tons of entertainment industry news in my line of work. But I’d lie if I said that I haven’t enjoyed any studio pictures lately. I really liked Thor. And Captain America wasn’t too bad (or too great, either).
All in all, I think the best storytelling in Hollywood is taking place on TV these days…
-
Jehuda
NOW THEY TELL US: “The White House doesn’t create jobs”.
To the extent that private sector growth creates jobs – when the government isn’t getting in the way with onerous, harebrained regulations – the above is true.
But contrast the statement with the “saved or created” rhetoric of 2009…or with the awesome power of GOP presidents, who are widely believed in certain Leftie circles of being capable of “talking down the economy” (and when they do so, it’s for political gain, naturally).
On the other hand, we know it’s possible for a president to dampen growth in individual sectors of the economy. Ask the private jet industry. They know.
Related: Jake Tapper spars with Jay Carney about Obama’s plans to spur job creation. Sounds like he doesn’t have any.
-
Jehuda
Let them eat arugula…if they can afford it: Study: Federal eating guidelines add $380/person to yearly grocery bill.
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
R.S. McCain: Dispatch from Des Moines…or ‘How Many Jobs Has California Democrat Barbara Lee Created?’
Remember: Independent, non-MSM-filtered journalism like R.S. McCain’s depends on you hitting his tip har. I donated last week. Have you?
-
Jehuda
Lame Excuser-In-Chief: “When I said ‘change we can believe in’ I didn’t say ‘change we can believe in tomorrow.’ Not change we can believe in next week.”
The problem is that it has looked like change you can’t ever believe in for quite some time now. And lame, empty, not-my-fault rhetoric like the above is only one of the many reasons why. Isn’t it tantamount to POTUS saying ‘You F*%#d up. You trusted me’?
Related: Obama’s 7 Deadly Sins.
UPDATE: Obama’s new fundraising speech: 2008 was really bad, so I need a second term.
-
Jehuda
The world’s 50 most delicious foods.
Via MM.
-
Jehuda
A Kubrick movie for people who don’t like Kubrick movies: A Criterion Collection edition of The Killing is coming August 16. On DVD and Blu-ray.
Without a doubt one of the best crime thrillers ever made…
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
DOG BITES MAN: Media Matters Puts Tax-Exempt Status in Jeopardy.
-
Jehuda
A Lincoln assassination eyewitness…on television?
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
Twilight of the Rubes: Bill Maher on Obama: “The Magic Is Gone”.
Magic? Isn’t Maher like one of the leading luminaries of the Reality-based Community’?
-
Jehuda
Beware the Shame-Industrial Complex: Mug shot industry will dig up your past, then charge you to bury it again.
-
Jehuda
Time Inc. promises all magazines on all tablet platforms by the end of the year.
No mention of Blackberry’s tablet, though.
I’ve been reading Reason magazine on my Xoom using Amazon’s Kindle app and I’m really enjoying it. Cheap subscription, too!
-
Jehuda
It’s not a Murdoch thing. It’s a British tabloid thing: Heather Mills Accuses Daily Mirror of Hacking Her Phone.
The lefty-sympathizing, non-Murdoch-connected, Piers-Morgan-Edited British tabloid? You don’t say!
-
Jehuda
An Oasis of Civility: Rep. Emanuel Cleaver says Satan is in the sandwich, but not in the GOP.
Or something. Seems like he’s rejecting the talking points du jour…or at least backing away from them. Maybe he doesn’t want to come across as a hypocrite, like so many others on the Left.
-
Jehuda
Ed Driscoll: Everything’s Wrong With Hollywood, But It’s All Fixable.
What if it’s too late?
-
Jehuda
How Does a Four-Year-Old Spend $46,000 a Month?
It’s all in the details…
-
Jehuda
-
Jehuda
Is Civic Involvement the New Terrorism? (BUMPED): Pew Center Study:Tea Partiers Followed Debt Ceiling News Most Closely, And Acted On It: “66% of Republicans and supporters of the Tea Party closely tracked the budget negotiations vs 34% of those who held different views or had no opinion. What’s more, about 20% of the Tea Party supporters contacted an elected official. Only 5% of those who disagreed with the group did so.”
That sure sounds like terrorism…if you’re a member of the Ruling Class, that is. The Ruling Class doesn’t like civic involvement (and its catalyst, the educated citizenry). It increases opportunities for self-government and – well – we can’t have that.
They know a thing or two about lack of civic involvement in California. That’s the only way you could get away with city manager salaries like these.
UPDATE: Now, why is it that so few Joe Nocera and Jon Stewart types didn’t contact their elected officials? Are feelings of apathy really that bad when you experience the Twilight of the Rubes? You snooze, you lose, folks.
Well done, Tea Party. Well done. Now, keep pushing!
UPDATE: Related: “The latest Gallup survey of US political ideologies is out, and anybody who wants to understand why Democrats kept ceding ground during the debt battle should take a look at these numbers.” (via TOM)
