The National Debt is Child Abuse. Sorry kids, it'll have to come out of your paychecks, because we listened to a bunch of con-man politicians. We don't even know how big the debt is because they're still lying to us. If you want to see your future, watch the reports coming out of France and Greece during the past 6 months.

This is why I oppose third parties. They split the party vote. Beware of false Tea Parties. Too bad Ralph Nader is so old.

National Review:

Liberals tend to prefer Thomas Jefferson’s vision of religious liberty to the one actually enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution, so here’s one for them, from his bill for religious freedom in Virginia: “To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”

Don't you hate it when your favorite Founder confounds you?

"Credentialed, Not Educated":

Students at large state universities can often receive a better education than Ivy Leaguers because the faculty (though still largely liberal) is materially more intellectually diverse and — crucially — their peers are much more ideologically and religiously representative of the general population. At state schools, both conservatives and liberals are much more likely to be substantially challenged by their professors and peers.

True liberalism exhibits tolerance and tries to understand other points of view. Today's Liberals enforce lock-step conformity and seek to punish anyone who disagrees or even admits to Ungoodthink, as Juan Williams did by admitting to a feeling of apprehension when boarding an airplane with identifiable Muslims aboard, even as he was trying to illustrate why we shouldn't give in to such feelings, since most Muslims are peaceful, devout people who enrich our society.

Have you no shame, Madam.

Juan Williams guest-hosted for Bill O'Reilly tonight and blasted NPR with both barrels, particularly the remark about his feelings being between him and his psychiatrist. Lanny Davis came on as a guest and criticized the woman who fired Williams and mentioned how Rachel Maddow had further smeared Williams by showing clips from Fox News of people expressing anti-Muslim attitudes, implying that if you work for Fox you must share those opinions. Davis himself was attacked throughout the left when he supported Joe Lieberman when the left defeated him in the Democratic primary.

The Juan Williams Law. All I could add is that it should be read by Congress and available to the public before it gets voted on.

The Big Dog

Worried about outside spending? While Obama has been attacking the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or Karl Rove's American Crossroads PAC for spending money to help Republicans win in November? Consider that AFSCME, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, leads all the others:

The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is now the biggest outside spender of the 2010 elections, thanks to an 11th-hour effort to boost Democrats that has vaulted the public-sector union ahead of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the AFL-CIO and a flock of new Republican groups in campaign spending.

The 1.6 million-member AFSCME is spending a total of $87.5 million on the elections after tapping into a $16 million emergency account to help fortify the Democrats' hold on Congress. Last week, AFSCME dug deeper, taking out a $2 million loan to fund its push. The group is spending money on television advertisements, phone calls, campaign mailings and other political efforts, helped by a Supreme Court decision that loosened restrictions on campaign spending.

"We're the big dog," said Larry Scanlon, the head of AFSCME's political operations. "But we don't like to brag."

If the time comes when unions can out vote the private sector, it's over for the U.S.

NPR's Dan Rather Moment

Juan Williams unleashed!

Headline: In wake of NPR controversy, Fox News gives Juan Williams an expanded role

The cable news network signs the analyst to a new three-year contract for nearly $2 million. Meanwhile, conservative figures blast the public radio network for its response to Williams' comments about Muslims.

NPR has, however, indicated that the real reason had more to do with the intolerance of its executives toward Fox News, as well as pressure from the White House and George Soros, one of NPR's big contributors, along with CAIR's complaint as the figleaf.

By circling the wagons to enforce their bias, NPR has only freed Williams from its constraints, and sent the message to all other NPR commentators that they have to watch what they say or get fired. My judgment about NPR seems vindicated. Not only does it get federal money, which it is quick to say is only a tiny fraction of its budget, its stations are mostly on college campuses subsidized by the state. It has become more and more bold in reflecting the radical liberalism in academia. In firing Williams NPR has done nothing to hurt him, and an awful lot to make its own hard line on political bias more clear than ever.

Nina Totenberg is being caught up in this controversy as people point to much more bigoted statements on programs off NPR's air. Quelle surprise!

James Taranto points to the misstatement of Williams' remark by CAIR in its memo to NPR as evidence of NPR's disingenuity. Williams didn't say this on NPR's air, but CAIR went after his job there. That alone should have outraged NPR's executives. Who does CAIR think it is to go after a man's job, merely because he said something that everybody but a hermit would agree with, and then only to set up the point that Muslims should not be prejudged to be likely terrorists?

This is a stupid a move from the liberal media as we've seen since Dan Rather tried to defend using faked documents to show that George W. Bush had gotten an easy pass from the Texas Air National Guard. A half a moment of thought by anybody in the chain of decision would have saved them this total humiliation, but, hey, CAIR had complained! They just had to take action.

NPR has fired Juan Williams for candid comments he made on the Bill O'Reilly program on Monday night. Mara Liasson had better watch out. I'd guess that most people who listen to NPR and most of those who work there despise Fox News and resent the fact that Williams has appeared so frequently on Fox.

I went to NPR's website and found the report of Williams termination. What struck me was that there were nearly 4000 comments and, if the first page is an indication, most of them negative.

It really confirms what I decided about NPR years ago when I quit donating to my local NPR station. They spend as much time on commercials for themselves and begging for donations that they could easily fund themselves by selling that time to sponsors. They also run short spots promoting their sponsors, so the idea that they're somehow unsullied by capitalism is absurd. Where do they think their donors' money came from?

I also got tired of the elitist appeals in their pitches for donations, implying that you should listen because their reports are aimed at smart people, the elites.

I listened to NPR and donated for over 20 years before I quit both. I listen occasionally and the programing is quite interesting. I also got tired of the liberal bias. The firing of Williams was based on complaints from CAIR, an Islamic pressure group for political correctness. I'm watching Megyn Kelly interview Ibrahim Hooper, the CAIR spokesman, and CAIR comes across as a whiny critic who wants to interfere with freedom of speech. He tries to turn the questioning back on Kelly. If this creep is the face of Islam, I don't see a good future for American-Islamic Relations.

If Mr. Hooper wants to improve those relations, he'd spend more time criticizing Muslims who support and participate in terrorism. Nearly every time we hear of a new terrorist attack, it was carried out by Muslims. It's not an issue of Muslim's civil rights that Juan Williams acknowledged the truth of that fact. There have been small, isolated attacks on Muslims, but CAIR's attitude is not going to make them go away. It's more likely to make them worse.

Here's another tip. Teach your fellow Muslims to quit emulating Ayatollah Khomeini in their expressions. When you get on a plane and notice people with angry expressions glaring at everybody, it makes you feel less than safe. That's just a fact of life. Trying to shut down anybody who says so is the action of someone who doesn't believe in free speech for anybody but himself. Until CAIR figures that out, it's only going to hurt the image of Muslims in the country.

Ed Morrissey:

Just the mere utterance of a secular heresy (and on Fox News!) is enough to get the government-funded media outlet’s Bureau of Editorial Inquisition engaged. They didn’t even bother to give Williams the Galileo option of disavowing his public statement first, and instead cast him out lest he taint the True Political Faith.

Just saw a clip of a spokeswoman at NPR saying "His comments and his comments in the past, again, I want to point out this isn't about the one issue, it's about sort of a pattern of issues that are very very controversial. We don't want our reporters and news analysts being the focus of news; we want them to cover the news and when they become too much the story because they're expressing their own views, that undermines our credibility as a news organization."

Isn't that what news analysts do, express their personal views? Are they supposed to tailor their views to be politically correct? If so, what good are they as political analysts.

And, by the way, Juan Williams didn't make himself the story, CAIR, the Huffington Post and NPR did that.

Update: Best comment so far is on Althouse's blog by "Fred4Pres": Apparently all things cannot be considered.

Read the whole thing.

How bad have the Democrats sucked in the past two years? The phrase "like a bilge pump" comes to mind.

So the Democrats sucked. But not just plain old, usual politician sucked, but epic levels of suck where it’s hard to find an analogue in human history that conveys the same level of suckitude. It was sheer incompetence plus arrogance — and those things do not complement each other well. We’re talking sucking that distorts time and space like a black hole.

Do people really want egotistical prat columnists to insult their intelligence?

Cherche le Homme

An old Kingston Trio song from the 1950s goes as follows:

They're rioting in Africa
They're starving in Spain
There's hurricanes in Florida
And Texas needs rain
the Whole world is festering with unhappy souls
The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles
Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch
And I don't like Anybody very much.

But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom-shaped cloud
And we know for certain that some lucky day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away

They're rioting in Africa
There's strife in Iran
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow Man

-- Sheldon Harnick @1958

Not much has changed, except that now they're rioting in France, and Iran is working on its own mushroom shaped cloud.

Watching clips of the riots in France, I was put in mind of this column by Ruth Marcus complaining about the challenge that's been popping up in debates, "Man up!" I sent her the following response:

I think it's a great slogan. Americans need to get away from the government teat and show some independence. We need to quit feeling sorry for ourselves, face the future with courage and firmly tell the purveyors of dependence, "No!" We need to support ourselves and be frugal and thrifty and save for our own retirement, and then put that off as long as possible. It will take a long time to return to that model and shrink the federal government to the role that was intended for it.

If there's anything that the Feminists stand for it's acting more like a man; reject homemaking, have a career, get to the top. They've made women who want to stay home and raise a family in partnership with good men feel shamed. That's why Sarah Palin is such a breath of fresh air. She's feminine but strong, courageous and proud to be a wife and mother, which means being a leader as well. Maybe her slogan should be "Woman up!"

Freedom is a byproduct of independence. To the extent you have to rely on others, you're not free. Liberty is wonderful, but you don't keep it if you don't earn it every day.

Instapundit explains progressive "logic:"

The Constitution stands for things that are good. The things that we want are good. Therefore, the Constitution stands for what we want. QED. How can those dumb wingnuts not understand this simple logic?

I'm tiring of the triumphalist chest beating from conservatives and libertarians who think that they are the tea party. The tea parties are a coalition of different groups who probably didn't know each other before the Congress went on its spending binge. I don't know what their relative numbers are. It'll take a lot of polling and analysis after the vote to figure that out. If and when the spending is under control, will they still agree on issues like gay marriage, abortion, etc.? I doubt it.

More Phony Hope

The latest Obama bureaucracy is looking like yet another frustration for the Gulf Coast.

The comparisons with California are the most impressive.

Jonah Goldberg:

Failure to indulge these building sprees is routinely blamed on the right's anti-government ideological dogmatism. The irony is that there's not that much ideological opposition to worthwhile public works projects. There's some, but most objections are much more consistent with the old-fashioned country-club-style fiscal conservatism everyone claims to miss. The white elephants are just too expensive to build, and they often seem to be aimed at disguising wealth distribution, either to favored unions or to favored donors.

I just heard that the proposition on California ballots to legalize pot is polling even at 50-50. This could mean that in some California cities you won't be able to buy a Coca-Cola or smoke tobacco, but a blunt will be perfectly legal. Has anybody done any research on the long term health effects of smoking marijuana instead of tobacco?

Moving way too fast

Byron York on Congress members not reading the bills they vote on:

After the past 18 months, can anyone deny that reading, thinking and slowing things down on Capitol Hill would be a good idea?

First the VFW PAC endorsed Barbara Boxer and a bunch of other liberals. Today the VFW dissolves the PAC board.

Yes!

The worst idea since Obamacare.

A Remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show

I watched the first half of the movie the other night and wondered why Hollywood hadn't remade it before now, it seemed both obvious and stupid. And today, there it was!

Can it, Harry.

First of all, Obama dug the hole he's in and he hasn't stopped digging. Secondly, the Chilean miners didn't dig themselves out of their hole. It was drilled down to them with the help of American businesses and NASA.

Oh, and check out Michael Ramirez' take.

More about Obama searching for his old magic.
It's not in Ohio.

There was little news embedded in the president's words unless you care that Obama offered Ohio State condolences on its stunning Saturday night football defeat against Wisconsin. Or that, according to Ohio State campus police, the crowd was charitably estimated at 35,000. There were the familiar 2010 tropes, like his automotive attack line on the Republicans, "It's as if they drove America's car into the ditch." Once again, Obama warned about the implications of hidden corporate campaign spending because of a recent Supreme Court decision: "This isn't a threat to the Democrats, it's a threat to our democracy."

Scientific evidence for psychic prediction.

Across nine experiments, Bem examined the idea that our brain has the ability to not only reflect on past experiences, but also anticipate future experiences. This ability for the brain to "see into the future" is often referred to as psi phenomena.

Although prior research has been conducted on the psi phenomena - we have all seen those movie images of people staring at Zener cards with a star or wavy lines on them - such studies often fail to meet the threshold of "scientific investigation." However, Bem's studies are unique in that they represent standard scientific methods and rely on well-established principles in psychology. Essentially, he took effects that are considered valid and reliable in psychology - studying improves memory, priming facilitates response times - and simply reversed their chronological order.

Well, I've read before how scientists have wondered why our brains seem larger than they need to be.

No lesson learned here. The President is going into his Saul Alinsky routine, which might work in the case of a union fighting with management or a neighborhood seeking to mau-mau the city of Chicago, but it this setting, the incredible arrogance of his attitude is likely to blow back in his face. Tea Party Republicans aren't likely to crumble like big city Democratic pols.

Did it ever occur to anybody

that the reason these wealthy donors are contributing to Republicans is that they'd like to be able to put their money to work creating jobs and making money?