Watching the latest GEICO ad.

Why can conservatives have some spokesmen like R. Lee Ermey. Wait, we do! The Tea Party!

Tim Cavanaugh (via Instapundit points out a deflationary trend and a commenter adds:

“So who fears deflation? Debtors fear it. And who is the biggest debtor? The federal government – to an extent never seen before in the history of this country.

The post itself and all the comments (although some of them are mine), are worth reading.

I think that deflation right now is not a serious problem, just a symptom of the uncertainly the Democrats have created by passing huge regulatory bills that call for regulations yet to come and by passing deficits that they intend to use as an excuse for raising taxes next year. These people are the biggest threat to this country right now. They should never be allowed near the levers of power again and that applies as well to good number of Republicans who have become part of the Washington-think crowd and need to be replaced.

Bummer!

I wonder if they tried using it with any other skimming technology, such as Kevin Costner's centrifugal oil separation machines. They've only got 4 or those, I'd like to see about a hundred of them on barges surrounding A Whale dumping recovered oil into it. These absorbent booms seem unnecessarily messy and hard to handle onece they've absorbed oil. Somebody needs to get creative here.

If BP needed a plumber to tell them how to connect a cap to the well itself, I think they may not be thinking outside the box.

The coverage now will be on the clean up and Obama can't blame the government's lousy performance on that front on BP alone.

They'll sue Arizona, though.

A Justice Department official confirmed in a news report this week that the agency will not take any action against cities that defy a 14-year-old federal law by offering illegal immigrants sanctuary. The measure (Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996) specifically requires states and municipalities to cooperate with federal authorities when it comes to immigration enforcement.

The suit against Arizona claims that Arizona is violating that same statute by instructing its peace officers to detain illegal aliens for the government.

I'm not too impressed with Eric Holder's legal acumen or plain critical thinking skills.

It happened in over a year ago!

I just stumbled onto Wikileaks, an organization to facilitate the leaking of secrets by publishing them anonymously and defending whistle blowers. It claims to be dedicated to "principled leaking," but I couldn't find anything that defines the principles under which it would refuse to participate in a leak. J. Christian AdamsC a former DOJ attorney have criticized the decision not to follow through on the voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party for incidents during the 2008 election in Philadelphia. The news media, other than Fox News Channel and conservative bloggers and magazines has ignored the story, but it seems to be picking up steam, as other former DOJ attorneys have come forward to support allegations of pro-Panther racism in the handling of the case.

A word search of WikiLeaks' site for "J. Christian Adams" returned 5 matches but none to the full name. I guess his case is against their principles.

UPDATE: The Ombudsman at the Washington Post wonders why his papern' took so long to cover the panthergate story:

Thursday's Post reported about a growing controversy over the Justice Department's decision to scale down a voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party. The story succinctly summarized the issues but left many readers with a question: What took you so long?

For months, readers have contacted the ombudsman wondering why The Post hasn't been covering the case. The calls increased recently after competitors such as the New York Times and the Associated Press wrote stories. Fox News and right-wing bloggers have been pumping the story. Liberal bloggers have countered, accusing them of trying to manufacture a scandal.

But The Post has been virtually silent.

If it had been white supremacists and the Bush administration, they'd have been all over it for months, Maybe the WaPo reporters just need some more Republican and conservative "sources." I've heard or read that a lot of well-paid "journalists" are pretty lazy, expecting to have their stories leaked to them or pre-written as press releases. I hope that's not true. That could really hurt their business.

This "culture of corruption" must extend beyond the White House.

Spam of the Day

"You May Qualify for Bankruptcy"

Oddly, it didn't come from the White House.

But wait, maybe it's this one:

This is Jessica from Financial Aid Department.

I have been trying to reach you in order to inform you
that a Stimulus Check is available to you maybe!

Please register here to claim.

The effects of the Fin Ref Bill, according to the WSJ

The timing of Dodd-Frank could hardly be worse for the fragile recovery. A new survey by the Vistage consulting group of small and midsize company CEOs finds that "uncertainty" about the economy is by far the most significant business issue they face. Of the more than 1,600 CEOs surveyed, 87% said the federal government doesn't understand the challenges confronting American companies.

Again the problem is uncertainty. If the Dems hold both house of Congress that uncertainty will continue for two more year after January.

But it could be quantum physics for all they care. Actually that may be a good way of viewing it. Their promises are in a superposition that doesn't collapse until the regulations are made and the courts have ruled. Does any law come into being until it has been ruled on by the courts? Does it exist as a curve of varying probabilities until thus defined?

It isn't their age. How old are Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi? Age and experience don't really matter if you're just foolish.

Who is more racist?While there may be some racist individuals in the tea party movement, they are few and far between. Calling the movement "racist" on the basis of that, is slanderous in my view. The NAACP is racist in its very nature, since it's "for the Advancement of Colored People." That was all well and good at a time when "colored people" were being deliberately and systematically deprived of their civil rights. But now the system has reversed itself to create deliberate and systematic discrimination in favor of colored people in the name of affirmative action, a misnomer. It would be more properly called "payback." That aside, the tea party is not about race, but about spending, taxes and the increasing arrogance of elected officials. This is not a reaction to Barack Obama's, or anyone else's, race, but to the policies he and his party have adopted, which now threaten to bankrupt this nation. I'm sure there are African Americans who think that would only be fair, but they should reflect on that, because when the nation can't pay its debts, they'll suffer too. The rich will always have ways to move their wealth where it can't be touched. Those who aren't rich, not so much.

Cheerful News from Charles Krauthammer

Higher taxes are coming.

There just isn't enough to cut elsewhere to prevent national insolvency. That will require massive tax increases -- most likely a European-style value-added tax. Just as President Ronald Reagan cut taxes to starve the federal government and prevent massive growth in spending, Obama's wild spending -- and quarantining health-care costs from providing possible relief -- will necessitate huge tax increases.

Who would have thought that two elections could wreak such damage?

On the bright side, maybe national bankruptcy would bring us to our senses and a few good amendments to the Constitution. I would make it against the law to create entitlement programs and repeal those we already have. They are the most serious threat to any republic, because they allow some people to vote themselves benefits to be paid for by others. Like interest or geometric progressions they look like nothing to worry about at first. The old parable about the Rajah who promised to give a wise man one grain of rice for the first square on a chess board, two for the second, four for the third and so on applies here.

I haven't watched Chris Matthews in a while

Here's why. When you ask Chris Dodd a question and he says "I wouldn't go quite that far," meaning to the left, there's something wrong with the questioner.

Democrats seek to capitalize on their leaders' unpopularity.

To the tune of three quarters of a million bucks.

Why the economy is still stuck

Because Obama is stuck on stupid.

Earlier I started a post about the New Black Panther voter intimidation case and how it had broken out as a major story after it had been ignored by the mainstream press since it was dismissed. I aborted it, because I had no source and I don't waste my time scanning the liberal press and I have known about it pretty much all along because I get my news from Fox News and the conservative blogosphere. Now I have a source, and readers can evaluate it.

The videos of this group in action in Philadelphia are really shocking. The right to vote anonymously and without intimidation is important to me. The tactics used in the past to prevent people from voting, such as "literacy tests" or "poll taxes" that were stacked against poor blacks were in effect when I was a child, but I didn't know about them until I was teen in the 1960s, and it was shameful. That being said, it can't be made up by allowing black thugs to intimidate voters in favor or their preferred parties today.

what a Salesman!

Can Obama sell electric cars in Michigan? Veronique de Rugy is baffled.

Once again, it seems that Obama is living is a dreamworld.

Good News, Everybody!

Fed predicts full recovery in 5 years. Just as in FDR's presidency, Washington is frightened by the deficits it has created and moved toward balanced budgets only to turn the recession into a double dip.

Since Senator Byrd passed on, I nominate Arlen Specter for the Mr. Indispensable award.

Comment of the Day

Harry can spend $100 million I still would vote for Hitler or Mao, or Mussolini over him. Harry the war is lost Reid is an utter disaster in the Senate. Only clueless and welfare voters would vote for him!

That's essentially my view, although I'd change "Hitler, Mao or Mussolini" to "a potted plant." He is a nasty piece of work, and I'm worried that Sharon Angle may not be up to the task of beating him. The only way I can explain that is to chalk it up to the efforts of labor unions, in Nevada. Harry Reid has flatly denied the presence of illegal immigrants working in Nevada, and he has still climbed to a 7 point lead over Angle almost overnight.

I don't care how conservative Sharon Angle is. This job is for a federal legislator, not President or Supreme Court Justice. She might vote in some ways I wouldn't agree with, but on what counts now, government spending, I trust her to support cutting it. I don't care what she thinks about abortion. A single Senator can't affect this issue unless he/she is the 60th vote for cloture over approval of a Supreme Court Justice.

Quelle Surprise!

Obama claims "we" have solved the BP leak.So I guess that makes it his and BP's oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico.

Michael Barone begs the question, does passing a bill increasing taxes and costs of living, that nobody has been allowed to read, constitute due process? "We have to pass it so that you can see what's in it" just doesn't cut it, and the fact that Pelosi could get away with saying something like that is an indicator that the American people have become a bunch of passive cattle.

The Next Bubble: Municipal Bonds?

What can you do about fraudulent elections?

The Al Franken recount reversal of the 2008 Minnesota Senatorial Campaign is coming under scrutiny, but even if it could be proven that he wasn't legally elected, I don't think anything could be done about it now. Would we have to reverse all his votes where Coleman would have voted differently? No.

That's why Republicans and others must stand up against laws that make vote fraud easier, including the refusals to enforce immigration laws. I bear Mexican-Americans or any other legal immigrant citizens no animus, but they of all people should be anxious not to have the privileges of U. S. citizenship diluted by creeps who are willing to do anything to win. Right now, that means Democrats. If it isn't stopped, Republicans will have no option but to play by the same rules, and that will really destroy our system.

Obamacare is covering abortions. 2012 Slogan: "Obama lied. The Unborn died."

I really despise politicians who lie to us on the theory that they know best for us.

The WaPo reports:

A 2008 voter-intimidation case has become a political controversy for the Obama administration as conservative lawyers, politicians and commentators raise concerns that the Department of Justice has failed to protect the civil rights of white voters.

That would be the New Black Panther voter intimidation case, which had been won in court before it was dismissed by the Obama Justice Department pulled it back and dismissed it.

There's that Carter comparison again!

Politico on the passage of the Financial Regulation bill:

Thursday’s passage of financial reform, just a couple months after the passage of a comprehensive health care overhaul, should decisively end the narrative that President Barack Obama represents a Jimmy Carter-style case of naive hope crushed by the inability to master Washington.

I'm beginning to think we need to reduce the presidential term to 2 years.

Meanwhile, businesses sit on their cash instead of hiring workers because they're uncertain of what the Dems will do to them next. The WaPo plays it as evil corporate greed, echoing Obama's anti-business rhetoric. Of course, he has no real answers for job creation if trillion dollar deficits aren't doing it, and businesses are thinking that this crew could literally bankrupt the country directly, or by inflation or higher taxes. Until they know what to plan for, they're not going to start hiring again.

Life can be cruel.

One day you're cruising along with people lining up to give you cash and the next your next big thing turns out to be defective, and you knew about it before you put it on the market. One reason I've never bought a cell phone is that as I looked at them and saw them falling out of my pocket, getting left someplace, getting scratched and broken, and ringing at the most least opportune moments. I knew this was a sign of the apocalypse.

Why Our Universe Must Have Been Born Inside a Black Hole. I've always thought that the Big Bang sounded like the other end of a black hole, but assumed that there was some mathematical reason why they weren't all saying so. Einstein's theory of gravity said that gravity approaches infinity at the center of black holes, so it seems reasonable to believe that these phenomena must compress matter to the point where it breaks down into space-time and erupts into a new universe. Too bad I can't do math in 11 dimensions. Heck, I couldn't even make a drawing as cool as the one in the story.

As I was watching a program about dark matter, dark energy and dark flow, last night, it occurred to me that there's more going on with vacuum than we understand. Hawkings explanation of how black holes can evaporate as virtual particle pairs get separated by the event horizon, is pretty much a mathematical model. But the basic fact that vacuum is a teeming sea of virtual particles that split apart and recombine faster than can be detected has evidence to support it.

An anonymous plumber

provided sketches of a flange and seal design six weeks ago that is almost identical to the containment cap lowered onto the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Art of Blowing It Bigtime

Victor Davis Hanson on the trust of the the American People Obama has lost:

At the root of the president’s problems lies an erosion of public trust in his competence and his credibility. Voters simply do not believe much of what he says any more, whether or not they otherwise agree with his agenda. The old tonic, teleprompted “hope and change” banalities, has become a caricature, and his empty gestures are fooling few these days.

Lee Bollinger argues that the press is too big to fail. He wants government aid to journalism but no strings attached. Good luck with that.

If it's the last thing I do . . .

Dead woman slams Harry Reid in her obituary. Charlotte McCourt died on July 8 at age 84 and had been a supporter of Harry Reid because he, like her, was a member of the LDS church. But her obituary contains this:

We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.

As the article says, ouch!

I think that Mrs. McCourt was like a lot of other Mormons who have been really offended and disgusted by Harry Reid's nastiness toward President Bush and Republicans in general and his willfulness in pushing through nationalized health care when it had become clear that the nation doesn't want it. He has emerged as a mean-spirited partisan rather than the dignified grandfather who rose from obscurity whom he has portrayed himself for years. I hope the chickens come home to roost on him.

"They're beginning to wonder if there's a greater reality."

The opening line of narration from a documentary called Is Everything We Know About the Universe Wrong? tonight on the Science Channel. It talks about another phenomenon just discovered called "Dark Flow" that seems to be driving galaxies in a direction different from that expected by current theories. A story yesterday asked, "Is gravity an illusion?"

Dark matter, dark energy, gravity as an illusion, now dark flow. The standard model is no longer satisfactory. But I don't expect any of them to start talking about God seriously any time soon. The way "smart" people discuss God these days is as some unembodied force or influence, not a person.

George Steinbrenner's estate dodged a bullet. By dying this year, he saved his heirs over $800 million in estate taxes. Bernie Sanders is outraged. He believes that money belonged to the government, apparently.

New liquid body armor under development. The article says it's like Kevlar mixed into custard, but remember that glass is also considered a liquid.

It's being said now that the delay in beginning the tests of the new cap on the BP well were required by the government, who wanted assurance that the tests wouldn't create new problems. Of course, the reason for these tests is to determine whether there are more problems along the well pipe.

Just like Obama

What does it say that Obama is being used as a metaphor for a big disappointment in a review of the iPod 4?

Notes: from the extended discussion at Special Report:

1. Obama considers the Democrats in the House as expendable. No wonder Pelosi is upset.

2. Sanctuary Cities may become the big story to come out of the suit against Arizona, because the government's argument is that Arizona's law is interfering with its efforts to enforce immigration laws, when there are 20 or 30 "Sanctuary Cities" around the country who have explicit laws against assisting the enforcement of those very laws?

3. Bill Clinton is more popular as a campaigner for Democrats than Obama.

(Via Kathryn Jean Lopez)

Byron York on Donald Berwick

Donald Berwick, recess-appointed by President Obama to head Medicare and Medicaid, is a well-known advocate of health care rationing and admirer of Britain's National Health Service. Rising health costs and limited resources "require decisions about who will have access to care and the extent of their coverage," Berwick wrote in 1999. Last year, he said, "The decision is not whether or not we will ration care — the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open." Of the NHS, Berwick says simply, "I love it," adding that it is "one of the great human health care endeavors on earth."

As it turns out, Berwick himself does not have to deal with the anxieties created by limited access to care and the extent of coverage. In a special benefit conferred on him by the board of directors of the Institute for Health Care Improvement, a nonprofit health care charitable organization he created and which he served as chief executive officer, Berwick and his wife will have health coverage "from retirement until death."

Not only has Obama lied to us about how his health care reforms would work; he's installed a leader of the program in a manner that denies Congress and the public an opportunity to question him and debate his appointment.

Well, I am gobsmacked!

Sarah Palin responds to the NAACP's Resolution Attacking Tea Parties

Some post-racial society!

If you make promises like that, and then resort to sleazy racist slurs when you get in trouble, guess how many of us will buy it the next time? And if you allow your organization to be used that cynically, you really don't deserve your prestige.

I was just wondering why I've never really subscribed to a newspaper.

Looking at the WaPo website, I find maybe two or three headlines I'd follow, but there's a kind of cool, smug, tone about it that I find off-putting. I suppose this is intentional, an effort to reach out to the young, smart, hip sophisticates in its target demographic. The problem is that this ends up bringing jackasses like Dana Milbank to prominence. I can see why they dislike about conservatives, but it's the same think that annoys the really smart conservatives about them.

The main headline is The Unheeded Lessons from Exxon Valdez, which looks like a thumb sucker covering territory 20 years old. If the WaPo were really as acute and on top of things as it would have us think, why didn't it run this piece four or five years ago, or even last year during Obama's first year? Some investigative reporting could have saved him from this landmine.

Actually, I'm not bothered as much by that as the fact that it's entire coverage is loaded with opinions, all accusatory of BP and nothing critical of main employer in Washington. It's obvious that the apparent success of the newest cap on the well caught the paper off guard; instead of hopeful news, it emphasizes delays and the 84 days it has taken to finally get here, yet complains that BP is being too cautious in conducting the pressure tests of the new cap.

From other sources, I learn that the basic fact is that BP still isn't sure what other surprises the geology surrounding the well may be holding, or what shape the pipe is in. They could shut it down and a pressure build up could blow out the pipe at some other spot where it's been weakened. So they're testing all the various valves and connections in this new cap. And I still don't know how risky this was at the outset.

The total of about 7 or 8 reports and graphics features is the impression that all businesses are enemies of mankind and bastards to boot. Except, that is, the ones that grind up trees to make paper to print on and throw away after a day. Those are all environmentally responsible. They use soy-based ink.

Is this supposed to worry us?

While many conservative organizations immediately decried a federal judge's decision last week to invalidate the federal ban on recognizing gay marriages, tea party groups have been conspicuously silent on the issue.

The idea is to dump as many of the components of the current system as possible. Anything that divides us or distracts from that task ought to be ignored for now. The country is in peril. It's not the time to argue about gay marriage, which is not covered by the Constitution in the first place either as a guaranteed right or a prohibited practice. It belongs at the state level.

Is this the end of "never let a good crisis go to waste?"

The WaPo reports that the BP spill has failed to give environmental demands a boost in Congress. I think the rubes are catching on.

Traditionally, American environmentalism wins its biggest victories after some important piece of American environment is poisoned, exterminated or set on fire. An oil spill and a burning river in 1969 led to new anti-pollution laws in the 1970s. The Exxon Valdez disaster helped create an Earth Day revival in 1990 and sparked a landmark clean-air law.

But this year, the worst oil spill in U.S. history -- and, before that, the worst coal-mining disaster in 40 years -- haven't put the same kind of drive into the debate over climate change and fossil-fuel energy.

The whole attempt to associate CO2 with runaway global warming has developed a whole as big as the housing balloon, but it's not re-inflating. The dishonesty behind the claims, which were never all that believable in the first place, has hurt the credibility of people peddling theories that depend on carbon dioxide being a pollutant and "carbon footprint" part of new jokes. We still dislike pollution, but CO2 isn't one we're willing to worry about any more. At least I'm not. I've looked at the problem and decided that correctly predicting climate over decades and centuries is a long shot, and I'm not willing to do further damage to the world economy for it, especially in its current condition.

OK, cock fighting is illegal and inhumane. But roosterfutbol ought to be given a chance.

France bans the burkha and niqab. My reflex was to object, but then I thought how eerie it would feel to have all kinds of people walking around with masks on, I thought how it could affect our sense of safety and openness in our daily lives. This isn't about modesty. This is a different society, one where covering your face is a suggestion that you're up to no good. Only robbers and terrorists wear masks here.

Saying that this is about modesty goes way beyond the mark and is an insult to women as well as a way of maintaining them as second-class citizens. Modesty is not about hiding your identity.

Mr. Peepers gets tough.

"I think that he is on many occasions -- I shouldn't say on many occasions, on a few occasions -- I think he should have been more firm with those on the other side of the aisle," said Reid. "He is a person who doesn't like confrontation. He's a peacemaker. And sometimes I think you have to be a little more forceful. And sometimes I don't think he is enough with the Republicans."

Obama, former lecturer on Saul Alinsky's methods of organizing, a peacemaker? I think he's probably better at pulling the wool over his allies' eyes.

How To Drive Away Your Friends

Dave Weigel guest blogs for Andrew Sullivan and writes:

The Trig obsession has also, I'm sad to say, damaged Andrew Sullivan's reputation.

I think there's something obsessional about being gay anyway, because it makes up such a vast chasm between you and heterosexuals. It's kind of like saying "Nice day." to a black guy during the '60s and '70s and having him react, "Oh, BECAUSE I'M BLACK, you're being pleasant to me!?"

No surprise here.

Public confidence in President Obama has hit a new low, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll. Four months before midterm elections that will define the second half of his term, nearly six in 10 voters say they lack faith in the president to make the right decisions for the country, and a clear majority once again disapproves of how he is dealing with the economy.

George Brenner has died.

Racists!

The NAACP is about to adopt a resolution calling the Tea Party movement racist. Its members ought to re-examine themselves. I think they'd find the same kind of knee-jerk rejection of whites that they claim racists feel toward them. They should remember that racism works both ways. It's really kind of sad that African Americans have allowed themselves to become pigeonholed this way and vote for one party regardless of whether its policies are good or bad for them.

In-your-facists! The St. Louis Tea Party has passed its own resolution condemning NAACP racism.

The resolution says that the Tea Parties "harbor elements who are bigoted." By that standard, I think the NAACP surely includes racists and bigots, as well. Does that make it a racist organization, not necessarily? Well, given what the name is "the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," you'd have to say that it IS racist. I just watched an NAACP representative on Fox debate this with one from a Texas Tea Party organization. The NAACP representative could not hold his tongue. He kept repeating his talking points over the hostess, Megyn Kelly, and the Tea Party spokesman.

I don't believe the Tea Party movement is racist. I think that the idea of "advancing colored people" is racist, but in the past, it may have been justified. In some cases, it's probably justified today, but as civil rights for blacks have advanced, the NAACP seems to have become more shrill, unreasonable and more racist.
It's also become a pawn of the Democratic Party, which really is not in the interest of the "advancement of coloured people."

For a while, last night, the BP well was completely shut off, but how it's been unblocked again as they take measurements and test various valves and parts of the new cap. How soon will this be forgotten by the rest of the country?

Rand Simberg on the news about felons being allowed to vote in Minnesota:

At Least Caligula Sent A Whole Horse To The Senate.

It looks like ACORN only sent the rear end of one.

Heh. One of my favorite jokes, like the sign on the tailgate of a horse trailer, "Don't Be What You See!" or this sign at a business service: "Are you here alone, or is the rest of the horse tied up outside?"

Walter Russell Mead notes that whatever the truth about human-caused global climate change, the real Big Green Lie is the suggestion that these are the people to follow:

The core green problem is about the credibility of its policy proposals and the viability of the political strategy the big green groups pushed to enact them. Climategate and Glaciergate did not cause the collapse of the green agenda in Copenhagen and they are not responsible for the global decline in green political fortunes since then. Both the greens and their opponents need to understand that the reason that the Great Global Green Dream is melting lies in the sad truth that whatever the scientific facts of the matter, the global green movement is so blind and inept when it comes to policy and process that it has deeply damaged the causes it cares most about.

The old arguments that economic collapse caused by adopting the Green agenda wouldn't be all that bad or that it could be offset by green jobs, have been gainsaid by experience.

The truth is that the Democrats don't know how to create jobs other than by hiring people to work for government, but we're coming to the realization that government doesn't create wealth. It only runs on wealth generated by the people who pay taxes.

UPDATE: As I thought more about what Mead is saying, it occurred to me how much energy, money and time are wasted by all the conferences, panels and publications, legislation, manifestos and other time wasters that seem to be the primary way in which movements, such as environmentalism, feminism, multiculturalism and the fads that pass as planning. Generally all these things would take care of themselves if we let them work themselves out from the bottom up. There are exceptions, of course. Slavery, American segregation and South African Apartheid would probably never have budged without intervention, but the destruction of these evil doesn't make them the model for all future society, which can be worked out through market principles in a much more efficient and less disruptive manner.

Instead the Civil Rights Movement combined with an older revolutionary strategy of marches, demonstrations, and violent confrontation seems to have become the model for the left to obtain its goals regardless of what the majority wants. Does anybody want to host G20 Talks anymore, after the repeated clashes and destruction by anarchist criminals, who seem to cow even the police in the cities hosting these talks. Add to that the tactic of by-passing the political process by obtaining political goals through the courts, academia and press, where they get foisted on society without the debate, give and take and discussion that should be part of change. This seems confine itself to an intellectual elite, whose high-minded imaginations never seem to work in the real world. But never fear, they'll always be willing to go back to the drawing board and hand down new schemes for their inferiors, ignoring the equality of mankind and the right to have a voice in society.

Elena Kagan should not be confirmed. She's a follower, not an independent or deep thinker. The female SCOTUS members are all stereotypes of feminism, which is to say liberalism, as are the rest of the members who see themselves as another political branch, as the "living Constitution," rather than its interpreters. It isn't a matter of sex. It's about understanding of the correct role of the judiciary. Kagan has no internal compass and neither does Sotomayor, or Breyer or Kennedy. Even if Obama only gets one term, the damage he's done to this country will take a generation or more to repair, if, that is, we even try.

Dennis Miller knows Al Franken

He's said on the air, that when he heard the senatorial race in Minnesota close enough to require recounts, he knew that Franken would win, because Franken is relentless. So is the Democratic Party, the labor unions who support it and ACORN. Given all that, it's remarkable that Franken didn't "win" by a bigger margin and that it took a recount.

Amity Shlaes: Demonizing business deepened the Great Depression. The White House can learn from Roosevelt's mistakes.

That's been a running theme this week. What brings back a crumbling economy is confidence, not just among businesses but also consumers. That's why tax cuts work when deficit spending doesn't. Deficit spending happens a year at a time and so it contains its own time limit. Tax cuts, especially ones without expiration dates like the Bush cuts, give businesses more confidence that it's safe to invest and hire. Now the Democrats will let those tax cuts expire and try to blame the resulting tax increases on George Bush. That's pure, Grade A, 100% demagoguery.

Heh. The irony abounds.

Clinging to a myth

The people who accept global warming claims uncritically, and continue to dispute the feasibility of anti-missile defense systems, continue to cling to their progressive religion and its gun control gospel.

This has never seemed like a real contest to me. Nothing the gun control advocates have claimed is as convincing as the common sense of "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns." The world is awash in handguns and bigger firearms. The horse is out of the barn.

That being the case, we continue to see criminals committing crimes with guns against unarmed victims. Gee, why would that be?

Axelrod: 'Patchwork' of state laws would 'dillute' [sic] federal border efforts

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod on Sunday defended the administration's lawsuit against Arizona's immigration law, saying state laws such as the controversial one in the border state "dillute" [sic] federal efforts to secure the border.

I'm not sure where the misspelling of dilute came from unless it's from a typed press release, but the substance of his statement just calls attention to why the federal government is given this responsibility to protect the borders: it's failure to do so would create a patchwork of state and local laws. The problem is that the "federal efforts to secure the border" are pretty much non-existent. Nor would Arizona's law really dilute anything, since it only applies to situations where a person is required to furnish ID and it becomes clear that the subject is here illegally. I suppose one could argue that turning such persons over to ICE for further proceedings would overload that agency, but that is really a question of inadequate funding for a fundamental federal responsibility.

The real reason Democrats are unwilling to enforce the law is that they hope to curry favor with Latinos, including many who will vote fraudulently. There can't really be any other explanation. Nothing will really work until there's a reliable ID system that police and employers can depend on. Those who aren't here legally will have to leave and return according to the rules, but then the allotment of immigrants from Latin America needs to be expanded, including seasonal work permits. We claim to be a system of laws and not of men, but this administration is picking favorites to exempt from the law, including illegal immigrants and the New Black Panthers it has allowed to intimidate voters in a national election. It was wrong when segregationists placed barriers to blacks voting prior to civil rights laws, and it's just as wrong when it happens the other way around.