During an interview early this evening with Radio Iowa, Mrs. Romney directly addressed her fellow Republicans who’ve criticized her husband.Lady, a lot of people did get in the ring, and your husband used his financial advantage to crush them with carpet-bombed negative advertising.
“Stop it. This is hard. You want to try it? Get in the ring,” she said. “This is hard and, you know, it’s an important thing that we’re doing right now and it’s an important election and it is time for all Americans to realize how significant this election is and how lucky we are to have someone with Mitt’s qualifications and experience and know-how to be able to have the opportunity to run this country.”
Whoever said that we went to the Moon a half-century early may have had a point. Apollo was a tour de force, but only now is the tech infrastructure emerging to repeat it sustainably, affordably, and profitably.Osteoparosis develops in orbit. Afaik not even animal breeding has been tested in non-terrestrial gravity.
Though IMHO it may take additional decades of biology before humans can reside off-planet (and return).
Though there is no substitute for boots on the ground, in my reflective moments our planetary fly-by's seem more praiseworthy than Apollo.
No one expects the Diversity Inquisition!
Imagine what they would do to someone who complained how the meaning of ‘gay’ has been changed. Their response to a complaint that the meaning has been ‘perverted’ is too gruesome to contemplate.
NB: I am deeply dubious when custodians of the mainstream culture change a fairly common word because of usage within a small minority. I have no problem with, and it’s none of my business, how members of such a minority label themselves within their community.
I decline to project China's future until they've gone through at least one business cycle.I'm sticking with it.
I said that when they were riding fast and high, I'm saying it now that they're looking wobbly, and I expect to repeat it when they're banged up from a fall.
"First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin told KTVI-TV in an interview posted Sunday. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."The implication---the dog whistle---is that the body of a woman who was impregnated during rape did not resist. In fact, her body enjoyed it. What does that make her? Ask Rush Limbaugh about Sarah Fluke. Hey, you know, maybe she was asking for it.
In exchange for delivering her constituency on Election Day, IMO she should be offered something like responsibility for putting the country on the path to energy independence (I presume that such a role can be created in a way that passes Constitutional muster).Other posts of mine in the thread are related.
Success at that would reposition her to run for President.
By resisting the natural tendency of government to grow, (c)onservatives and libertarians are swimming against the tide. To succeed, it’s essential to be in the right, not just on the Right.Here:
I am a libertarian who is agnostic to the border of atheism.One more, a restateent of Murphy's Law (added 20120820):
Nevertheless, I would rather be governed by moonshine-drinkin’, sister-marryin’, snake-handlin’, NASCAR-lovin’ Bible thumpers than by over-educatedschooled postmodern multicultural elitist leftists of the Obama/Warren type.
Your worst-case scenario is hopelessly optimistic.
An astute commenter asks why we should oppose race-based decision making, if there is real correlational information to be had from ethnicity. I offer two reasons: 1. this country has a bad record on race, and striving towards a race-blind society is worth some small sacrifices, 2. the evidence for genetic group differences is not conclusive and should be treated with great caution.(Boldface mine.)
The Treasury Department was not immediately available for comment about the episode, or about the more-damning allegations of the book: that Geithner's Treasury Department repeatedly tried to undermine Barofsky's authority, ignoring his warnings about the risk of fraud in TARP programs and generally carrying water for the banking industry.Of course he carried water! He intended to make big bucks running one of those institutions. At the very least, he was laying the groundwork for a much better sinecure than Phil Gramm enjoys.
For the First Time, Canadians Now Richer Than AmericansThe deal with living in America is that things are tougher here than in other democracies, but the payoff is that the standard of living is higher for those who cope.
Therefore, since the world has stillOptimism:
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure,
I’d face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
For nothing worthy proving can be proven,On Friday the 13th.
Nor yet disproven: wherefore thou be wise,
Cleave ever to the sunnier side of doubt,
And cling to Faith beyond the forms of Faith.
She reels not in the storm of warring words,
She brightens at the clash of ‘Yes’ and ‘No’,
She sees the Best that glimmers thro’ the Worst,
She feels the Sun is hid but for a night,
She spies the summer through the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wailed ‘Mirage’!
After the last fatal attack in March, Western Australia Premier Colin Barnett ruled (out?) a culling programme, saying it was impossible to protect all people at all times.The culling is coming, you moron, and, I fear, not just for the sharks.
"While it's still a rare occurrence, the ocean is the domain of the shark and we go there with a risk always," he said at the time.
This is what I’ve been thinking. Crime makes strange bedfellows. (Would pro-legalization legislators get threats if the issue came to a vote?)Hopefully cartoons like this will spread into the major media.
This cartoon deserves wide circulation.
You haven’t even mentioned the prosecutors, police, correctional officers, prison corporations, social workers, therapists, probation officers, etc. who get paid for waging the idiotic Drug War.
Incredibly, to cap off the horrid news yesterday — and this has never happened before, and it happened TWICE — prospective customers (complete strangers) asked me what political party I am affiliated with because they weren’t going to do business with a Republican! The first was nasty, said that she has to know because Republicans are “crazy lunatics”.He is joined by 'tazz':
Interesting – family member had same exact thing happen… Foolishness from the left….My take:
I wonder if they thought of this behavior on their own, or if someone put them up to it. If the latter, who and how?If the behavior is foolishness, it is a pernicious kind.
1. Some well-intentioned conservatives claim that Roberts has executed a cunning plan to undermine the conceptual grounding of Leftist politics. I contacted Saul Alinsky via ouija board to ask about this. He said:We’re happy to concede the moral victories, the intellectual victories, the ethical victories, the future (so you believe) victories to you reactionaries as long as we get power now.Chuckling, he signed off.
2. America’s Ruling Class takes care of America’s Ruling Class. This is a good day to re-read Angelo Codevilla’a article of that title. I commend it to the attention of anyone who hasn’t read it.
3. This ruling forces me to rethink my opposition to Sarah Palin as a national candidate. Ditto for Gary Johnson. As a first step to that end, I’ve signed up for their mailing lists.
4. It is clearer than ever that replacing Obama with the Republican nominee is a finger-in-the-dike tactic—but it’s a worthwhile finger-in-the-dike tactic.
5. If it turns out that Roberts has laid the groundwork for a repeal of Obamacare by majority vote in Congress, I will admit I was wrong in #1. The rest of my post, with more urgency than usual, addresses matters that go well beyond Obamacare.
...a 2004 law passed by Saudi Arabia's Council of Ministers, which entitles expatriates of all nationalities who have resided in the kingdom for ten years to apply for citizenship with priority being given to holders of degrees in various scientific fields.[179] The Articles 12.4 and 14.1 of the Executive Regulation of Saudi Citizenship System can be interpreted as requiring applicants to be Muslim.[180]Knowing it and being able to implement it are two different things.
I continue to believe that Vice President Hillary would appoint herself Senior Co-President and work toward her 2016 agenda. Yanked among Hillary, Michelle, and Valerie Jarrett (with Bill Clinton in the background), Obama might regret it if he won the election.Earlier comment here.
His fate, he says, paralleled a growing belief within China’s leadership that it has little more to learn from the West, especially after the global financial crisis of 2008 and China’s success in riding it out. “We’re suddenly so important,” he says, with more than a touch of sarcasm in his voice. “Look at America. It has problems. We don’t have problems.”Given the touchy nationalism of many Chinese, it is surprising, and arguably reassuring, to hear someone speak that candidly, even from the sidelines. (HT: Dinocrat.)
Let me be clear. These people are not well-meaning do-gooders who have just gone a bit too far. They don’t actually “mean well” at all. They don’t mean well, they mean to be in control. They are power-fetishists, drunk on the joys of bossing the little people around. They are not good people. They are evil. They should be ashamed of themselves, but shame — like taxes — is for the little people.A reminder that Glenn is a preacher's son.
A culture that redefines food choices as moral issues will demonize the people who don’t share the tastes of the priest class. A culture that elevates eating to some holistic act of ethical self-definition - localvore, low-carbon-impact food, fair trade, artisanal cheese - will find the casual carefree choices of the less-enlightened as an affront to their belief system. Leave it to Americans to invent a Puritan strain of Epicurianism.But I must admit that if I had money, I would buy free-range meat and eggs for humanitarian reasons. But this is none of the government's business. I also welcome the day when meat is vat-grown.
The day when a dictator falls or yields to a democratic movement is glorious. The years of transition that follow can be difficult. People forget that this was true in Central Europe, where democratic institutions and attitudes did not spring up overnight. From time to time, there has been corruption, backsliding and nostalgia for the communist past. Essential economic reforms have sometimes proved painful and unpopular.Somtimes? Try usually:
Although all dictators are bad in their own way, there's one insidious aspect of despotism that is most infuriating and galling to me: the disturbing frequency with which many despots, as in Kyrgyzstan, began their careers as erstwhile "freedom fighters" who were supposed to have liberated their people.Moron.
If there’s one thing right wing blogs do better than whine about being persecuted by liberals, it’s gloat. They’re experts at it.My reaction:
If there’s one thing that left wing blogs do better than sneer at conservatives, it’s gloat. They’re experts at it.Gloating is enjoyable. Sneering is enjoyable. Whining is not enjoyable.
...I was saying that this liberation into individuality has not been a great success. For a historian of great interest, but for one aware of the suffering it is appalling. Hearts that get no real wage, souls that find no nourishment . Falsehoods, unlimited. Desire, unlimited. Possibility, unlimited. Impossible demands upon complex realities, unlimited. Revival in childish and vulgar form of ancient religious ideas, mysteries, utterly unconscious of course astonishing. Orphism, Mithraism, Manichaeanism, Gnosticism. When my eye is strong, I sometimes read in the Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics. Many fascinating resemblances appear. But one notices most a peculiar play-acting, an elaborate and sometimes quite artistic manner of presenting oneself as an individual and a strange desire for originality, distinction, interest—yes, interest! A dramatic derivation from models, together with the repudiation of models. Antiquity accepted models, the Middle Ages—I don't want to turn into a history book before your eyes—but modern man, perhaps because of collectivization, has a fever of originality. The idea of the uniqueness of the soul. An excellent idea. A true idea. But in these forms? In these poor forms? Dear God! With hair, with clothes, with drugs and cosmetics, with genitalia, with round trips through evil, monstrosity, and orgy, with even God approached through obscenities? How terrified the soul must be in this vehemence, how little that is really dear to it it can see in these Sadic exercises. And even there, the Marquis de Sade in his crazy way was an Enlightenment philosophe. Mainly he intended blasphemy. But for those who follow (unaware) his recommended practices, the idea no longer is blasphemy, but rather hygiene, pleasure which is hygiene too, and a charmed and interesting life. An interesting life is the supreme concept of dullards.Mr. Sammler's Planet appeared forty years before Fifty Shades of Grey.
Mitt leaned in close and said, "Man that Chuckles Johnson really takes it in the azz, doesn't he?"Ladies and gentlemen, we have a new record! Unlikely to be broken any time soon.
That said, I’m pretty sure the Left plans to use the judicial system to impose gay marriage on the country. It may take a Constitutional amendment to preserve the right of the states to decide.That didn't take long (HT: Althouse):
Rep. James Clyburn, the House Democrats’ third-ranking leader, said on MSNBC’s Daily Rundown Monday that the question of legal recognition of marriage between same-sex couples should not be left to state laws, but instead ought to be decided at the national level, a position that puts him at odds with President Barack Obama....Sure Clyburn is at odds with Obama. Surrrrre he is...
If DOMA were repealed or struck down, then there could be two possible ways to pass a national policy of recognition of same-sex marriages:
- Enactment of an amendment to the United States Constitution...
- A ruling by the Supreme Court which would find in the text of the Constitution a right for same-sex couples to marry.
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire.I hope not, but it's astonishing that Obama is not fifteen points behind and dropping. A bad indication of the country's common sense.
"They're going to drop Americans like hot potatoes," Mordi says. "The foreign banks are upset enough about the regulations that they're saying they just won't keep American customers, and it's giving (Americans living abroad) a lot of sleepless nights."Expats are renouncing their citizenship.
...I asked myself, 'What am I gaining as an American?' And the cons outweighed the pros."The danger I mentioned in 2007 (here too) is increasing.
Gradually taking shape is a war that will make WW2 seem like a schoolyard tussle. Sooner or later, in five years or fifty.For some time I've meant to post this but Terri said it before I did.
No organization can survive corruption and ineptitude at the top forever. And we’ve had the worse political class in American history for a while now, though its rottenness has really accelerated lately.If the collapse happens, they deserve to be hunted down and brought to trial. Hunted down from wherever they flee using, if necessary, what remains of our armed forces.
Last year I remarked:Dismayed, yes. Surprised, no.Will the world's financial traffic reroute around America the way the Internet routes around censorship? My guess is that we're not at that point yet, but if it happens it will happen faster than people expect.Perhaps the global economy too, at some point? Not that we are imminently becoming a backwater--but if it happens, it could happen faster than people expect: for example, our global competitors might sign trade agreements with partners we spurn out of protectionism.
Bond prices decline as investors favor risky assetsThere's another reason bond prices fall. Reuters doesn't mention it---doesn't even use the word---, but Fox does: inflation.
...(Reuters) - U.S. Treasuries prices fell on Monday, with longer-dated debt yields touching 4-1/2 month highs, as investors further pared bond holdings on signs of an improving U.S. economy and some stabilization of Europe's debt troubles.
