“This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot wrote, famously. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” This is the way good ideas end: not with success but liberal deja vu. Rochester, New York, has passed this way before

More »

. . . . And here comes in the question whether it is better to be loved rather than feared, or feared rather than loved. It might perhaps be answered that we should wish to be both; but since love and fear can hardly exist together, if we must choose between them, it is far safer to be feared than loved. . .. .

More »

To say that many people do not like TechCrunch founder Michael Arrington is some understatement. Anyone who can get the normally laid-back Leo Laporte to start cursing and shut down a broadcast has some kind of unique skills of irritation. (See also: DouchebagName.com) And it’s clear he relishes this distinction, having willingly posed for the photo at right for the late Business 2.0 magazine.No matter what one thinks of him, it’s becoming ever more clear that Arrington is driving a significant part of what journalism is becoming. And while I’ll decline for the moment to unpack what all of that means (I will happily do so for a modest book advance) let me point to two announcements from TechCrunch in recent months.

More »

Jan. 3, 2010, should be quite the scene at the new Cowboys Stadium.

More »

Screw Woodstock. Really, I mean it. If you’re my age — I was 9 when the three-day concert took place — you noted the 40th anniversary of the key event of our culture’s endless 1960s nostalgia by thinking, “Gee, have I really been listening to these goofs celebrate themselves for only 40 years? Because it feels like 400.”

More »

We enter the last two weeks of August, usually the laziest two weeks of the year.  It is the time, by tradition, that the nation’s psychiatrists go on vacation, meaning some of the people we cover may seem especially jittery and paranoid during the next two weeks, unless they’ve arranged their prescriptions in advance.  In Hollywood, many stars won’t know what to think, or whether to think, or will hire a personal thinker to think for them.

More »

The Wall Street Journal reported a day or two ago that France and Germany, the motors for Europe, are coming out of the recession. According to a piece by Rick Moran in the American Thinker, they are not alone: China and India are recovering as well. Among the most developed economies, only the United Kingdom and the United States are lagging behind.

More »

Europe Recovers as U.S. Lags Dollar drops as Germany, France see growth MSM had been forced to throw in the towel. The numbers are too obvious thoug they still ignore the much lower German unemployment. Obama and his minions may be running around taking credit for saving the US economy from depression. Actually, even the one successful stimulus program, Cash for Clunkers, is a copy of relatively cheep German one.

More »

It is one thing to believe that in the rapid growth of Antisemitism around the world or express a general concern about Antisemitism. It is another to feel personally threatened by it in America. Yet a recent poll of Democratic Jews designed to probe their attitude towards the Obama administration and its Middle East policy reveals that not only do Jewish Democrats believe that Antisemitism is on the march but almost four out of ten feel personally threatened by it.

More »

While arguing against the 2003 Medicare prescription drug bill, Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois) thought threats from unruly constituents were just fine. From The Congressional Record, November 21, 2003, H12242:

More »

Bemoaning his party’s failure to control the health-care debate, Berkeley linguist George Lakoff tells the Los Angeles Times: “I think it is very hard because [Democrats] don’t have the message machine the Republicans do. The Democrats still believe in Enlightenment reason: If you just tell people the truth, they will come to the right conclusion.”

More »

It’s hard to keep up with the stupidity, hypocrisy and lying that emerges from Democratic swamps, but let’s try:

More »

I have read over Section 1233 of the bill HR 3200 closely. It’s the “death panel” provision – there are no death panels in there.

More »

If a “turf war” is what breaks out between rival gangs, the battles unfolding at increasingly tense health care town hall meetings might be called “AstroTurf” wars. Literal AstroTurf is an artificial grass playing surface in a sports stadium; symbolic AstroTurf is a grassroots movement that reeks of phoniness.

More »

BRUSSELS, July 14 (Reuters) - A plan to end EU visa requirements for Serbians but not for Bosnian Muslims who suffered at Serb hands in the bloody break-up of Yugoslavia will deepen ethnic divisions in the Balkans, critics said on Tuesday.

More »

More »

First, she watches her husband drool all over an intern. Then, she goes neck and neck with Obama and pulls a Barbaro. Now, as the Secretary of State, she has to endure her HUSBAND’S success in North Korea as she is trying to prove herself in Kinshasa. She must be thinking, “I don’t get no RESPECT!” Gee, I wonder why she is having trouble in life…

More »

“And these are the idiots we want to weigh in on the minutia of health care policy? Please, this country is like a college chick after two Long Island Iced Teas: we can be talked into anything, like wars, and we can be talked out of anything, like health care. We should forget town halls, and replace them with study halls. There’s a lot of populist anger directed towards Washington, but you know who concerned citizens should be most angry at? Their fellow citizens. ‘Inside the beltway’ thinking may be wrong, but at least it’s thinking, which is more than you can say for what’s going on outside the beltway.”–Bill Maher’s assessment of ordinary Americans

More »

The era of affirmative action is indeed reaching its end. And it’s about time.

More »

Apparently Ahmadinejad has some fans in the US. One of them is the publisher of maps of the world.  It’s West Asia map includes the non existent country of Palestine and excludes the UN member, Israel.

More »

More »

Congressman Bob Latta (R-OH) has introduced a Bill to award the Congressional Medal of Honor to Arthur Jibilian for risking his life to rescue downed U.S. airmen in German-occupied Serbia in 1944. As usual, only the local TV station WTOL in Ohio has carried this story of national and international proportion.  

More »

Much has been made of the picture of Kim Jong Il with his (and his father’s) old friend, Bill Clinton. It is argued that Kim needs it for internal consumption. Not so, in his appearance in Meet the Press, Gen. James Jones reveals that Kim got much, much more. He convinced the American government that he is, indeed, in charge and, hence, it is worth while engaging/appeasing him. Moreover, the bilateral American North Korean talks Pyongyang wanted, may have already been renewed. All in all, an excellent day for Kim and his mobsters. Even more troubling is that Gen. Jones does not seem to be aware of the price America paid. Indeed, he celebrates Pyongyang’s victory.

More »

On Friday Philip Klein of The American Spectator did a great job of highlighting leftist hypocrisy in his appearance on MSNBC.

More »

Obamacare does not push seniors toward euthanasia.  It might, however, nudge them in that direction.  As Charles Lane explains in The Washington Post:

More »

Much to the surprise of the arrogant liberals who control the federal government, many Americans are resisting their “vision” to re-make an America they see as hopelessly broken. Currently the battleground is healthcare, but only a liberal twit would believe this particular subject is the sole repository of American disgust and discontent. Healthcare is only one battle–in a much bigger war.

More »

As reports are confirming the elimination of Pakistan Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud, including Pakistani sources to al Jazeera, a growing debate is widening in the international media about the “value” of that event. Some analyses are using terms such as “turning point,” while other are describing it as “lethal hit against Pakistan’s Taliban.” Evidently, authorities in Pakistan and the United States are logically rejoicing for the fact that a tough foe is gone. Intelligence estimates will soon tell how important what that successful drone and what would the field consequences be in the next weeks, months and maybe a year or two.

More »

One summer item that I’d meant to get to, since it’s a follow-up to a blog post I had in December, concerns a Bosnian-Muslim cocktail waitress in England:

More »

The opponents of Obama’s Health Insurance for All Americans have given him a gift. They so overplayed their hand that they provided a golden opportunity for the president to show the American people how irrational, irresponsible and false their criticisms are.

More »

One of those cosmic coincidences- John Hughes, whose off-beat comedies took Hollywood by storm in the 1980’s and early 1990’s then left Hollywood when the environment got stifling, died on 8/6/09 of a heart attack in New York City.
Preston Sturges, whose off-beat comedies took Hollywood by storm in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s then left Hollywood when the environment got stifling, died on 8/6/59 of a heart attack in New York City.
Sturges was a native Chicagoan, Hughes was a Chicago transplant.

More »

Well, I guess we all finally know where we stand.  We shouldn’t be confused any longer. The definition of words such as change, disinformation, mob, transparency, security-threat, healthcare reform, and fiscal responsibility seems pretty clear now.  I don’t think we need to wonder any longer what our newly elected government officials (and all their respective unelected czars) mean when they talk about such things.

More »

More »

In response to the outrage at the Leftist Congress that has been voiced by ordinary Americans in Town Hall events around the country, the Democrats have opted – typically – not to address the peoples’ concerns, but rather to demonize those who get in their way.

More »

Ah, sleepy, quiet August. A month filled with beach time, escapist novels, ice-cream cones and big, smash-’em-up popcorn blockbusters. It’s a time when many Americans — including our president and members of Congress — check out of their regular routines, at least for a little while, to savor warm breezes, cool lemonade and relative peace and quiet.

More »

MOST Americans have noticed that President Obama’s economic policies aren’t getting the job done. Fewer, however, realize that the administration’s foreign policies are flagging after just six months in the White House, too.

More »