Quotes of the Day

Barack Obama: President Pantywaist - new surrender monkey on the block, Gerald Warner, Telegraph.co.uk, April 10, 2009.

President Barack Obama has recently completed the most successful foreign policy tour since Napoleon's retreat from Moscow. You name it, he blew it. What was his big deal economic programme that he was determined to drive through the G20 summit? Another massive stimulus package, globally funded and co-ordinated. Did he achieve it? Not so as you'd notice. …

Then came the dramatic bit, the authentic West Wing script, with the President wakened in the middle of the night in Prague to be told that Kim Jong-il had just launched a Taepodong-2 missile. … President Pantywaist is hopping mad and he has a strategy to cut Kim down to size: he is going to slice $1.4bn off America's missile defence programme, presumably on the calculation that Kim would feel it unsporting to hit a sitting duck, so that will spoil his fun.

Watch out, France and Co, there is a new surrender monkey on the block and, over the next four years, he will spectacularly sell out the interests of the West with every kind of liberal-delusionist initiative … If you thought the world was a tad unsafe with Dubya around, just wait until President Pantywaist gets into his stride.

Of course, the fawning U.S. media are sure the trip was a tremendous success because of the One's™ poll numbers in Europe, although there are even a few dissenters on this side of the pond — It's Your Country Too, Mr. President, Charles Krauthammer, RealClearPolitics, April 10, 2009:

In his major foreign policy address in Prague committing the United States to a world without nuclear weapons, President Obama took note of North Korea's missile launch just hours earlier and then grandiloquently proclaimed:

"Rules must be binding. Violations must be punished. Words must mean something. The world must stand together to prevent the spread of these weapons. Now is the time for a strong international response."

A more fatuous presidential call to arms is hard to conceive. What "strong international response" did Obama muster to North Korea's brazen defiance of a Chapter 7 --"binding," as it were -- U.N. resolution prohibiting such a launch?

The obligatory emergency Security Council session produced nothing. No sanctions. No resolution. Not even a statement. …

Having thus bravely rallied the international community and summoned the U.N. -- a fiction and a farce, respectively -- what was Obama's further response? The very next day, his defense secretary announced drastic cuts in missile defense …

Our president came bearing a basketful of mea culpas. With varying degrees of directness or obliqueness, Obama indicted his own people for arrogance, for dismissiveness and derisiveness, for genocide, for torture, for Hiroshima, for Guantanamo and for insufficient respect for the Muslim world.

And what did he get for this obsessive denigration of his own country? He wanted more NATO combat troops in Afghanistan to match the surge of 17,000 Americans. He was rudely rebuffed.

He wanted more stimulus spending from Europe. He got nothing.

From Russia, he got no help on Iran. From China, he got the blocking of any action on North Korea.

And what did he get for Guantanamo? France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! …

When Austria is mocking you, you're having a bad week. Yet who can blame [Interior Minister] Frau Fekter, considering the disdain Obama showed his own country while on foreign soil, acting the philosopher-king who hovers above the fray mediating between his renegade homeland and an otherwise warm and welcoming world?

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From anger to madness: A class-warfare crazed government mob is running amok, Michael Goodwin, NY Daily Times, Mar. 22, 2009.

I should have said our representatives are gangsters in pinstripes and pearls. They are petty tyrants and the more power they grab, the more at risk we are. Homeland Security should flash Code Red any time this Congress is in session.

It is twilight in America now. The House vote to use the tax code to retroactively punish bonus babies was an act of sheer madness. What started as phony outrage at AIG has crossed the line into insane policy. It is stunning that the vote was lopsided and bipartisan. …

We should all be very afraid. Class warfare is mere predicate for a witch hunt that, once unleashed, will not stop with misbegotten wealth. It will punish success and stifle innovation. Dissent will invite dishonor. …

But now they [Congress] are dangerous, emboldened by public fear and anger. They know nothing, but have power and smell opportunity for more. …

In truth, there is no history for what he [Obama] is doing. He is the most radical President of our times, far outside the mainstream of our political philosophy.

He is not a reformer who fixes things. He fancies himself "transformative," a man who reshapes and reorders. It apparently begins with smashing the existing order under the pretext of managing the crisis he inherited.

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Why I am Depressed, Scott @ Powerline Blog, Mar. 22, 2009.

I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can't keep up and I can't stand to pay attention.

His aim seems to be to reduce us to government dependents. His inattention to rehabilitation of the financial system in lieu of vastly expanding the size and scope of the government is a dead giveaway, as is his lack of concern over the vast destruction of wealth his policies are working (and will continue to work).

Perhaps most depressing to me is the manifestation of his adolescent grandiosity in his stewardship of foreign policy and national security. …

Obama believes his cluelessness represents the higher wisdom. It is a source of his monumental self-regard. …

I am depressed because the President of the United States is a fool who will immiserate us, render us wards of the state and lose us our life and liberty to those who understand what they are about.

    We were assured during the campaign that The One™ knew how to repair our economic woes, would hit the ground running, and would have an amazing first 100 days. He promised fiscal responsibility, a line-by-line review of appropriations to end the pork and earmarks (ignoring the small Constitutional matter that the President does not have line item veto power), and total "transparency" in spending, whatever that means. He had 3 months between the election and inauguration to assemble his economic team and decide on his fiscal solutions to our banking and credit problems.
    What we got was a Treasury Sec., Tim Geithner, who was a tax cheat, still doesn't have a coherent plan, is unable to staff his Department, and is rapidly losing the trust of business, Congress, and the American people. The One™, a gifted student of FDR's handling of the Great Depression, comes to the profound insight that FDR simply didn't spend enough — his deep economic wisdom can be summarized as "federal spending = stimulus", with the corollary "massive federal spending = massive stimulus". He therefore tells Congress he wants around $800B in stimulus and lets them fill in the details (such minutia is apparently below his pay grade), and we get a bill full of all the pet projects the Democrats have wanted for the last 20 years, but little in the way of immediate economic stimulus. The Doommonger-in-Chief raved about the "crisis" becoming a "catastrophe" unless the stimulus bill was passed, all without the normal hearings, amendments, or other review, and certainly not any time allowed to actually read the monster before voting on it and him signing it.
    Yet in the real economic world, the Stock Market has dropped like a rock and is still searching for its bottom, the bank and credit markets are still unresolved, and we face the prospect of +$1T deficits for the foreseeable future as we continue to pour more money into failing institutions. The One™ and his comrades in the Congress demonize corporate bonuses to distract from their profligate fiscal irresponsibility, and they continue to get even worse:

The Obama administration will call for increased oversight of executive pay at all banks, Wall Street firms and possibly other companies as part of a sweeping plan to overhaul financial regulation, government officials said. …

The new rules will cover all financial institutions, including those not now covered by any pay rules because they are not receiving U.S. government bailout money. Officials say the rules could also be applied more broadly to publicly traded companies, which already report about some executive pay practices to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

    Meanwhile, The One™ wants to move on to universal health care, green jobs and cap-and-trade carbon offsets, and other more "interesting" issues, and engages in continual campaigning, appearing on Jay Leno and 60 Minutes to keep his approval rating up. This has been the worst beginning of a Presidential term in my lifetime, and the One's™ incompetence makes it likely it will only get worse. It's going to be a long four years.

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Geithner's Cash For Trash, Why no honest write-downs for bad debt?, Forbes.com, Susan Lee.

He came. He spoke. The market tanked. He went. The market tanked some more. Such is the power of Treasury Secretary Geithner.

To summarize:

1. We need to ignore Sec. Geithner's tax violations because he is uniquely qualified to manage the economy,
2. The One™, in his Monday press conference, announces that the saintly Geithner will detail the administration's solution for the banking/credit crisis,
3. The details are: we need to spend an additional $1-2 Trillion, amount otherwise undetermined, in unspecified ways.

There is a perverse curiosity in watching a train wreck, which you know is going to occur, as it unfolds before your eyes. As the liberals continue to believe the primitive logical fallacy of "word power", i.e. that simply saying the proper words with good intentions will magically transform reality, their incoherent policies would be comic if the inevitable outcome were not so tragic. But, of course, we were assured that such a magical transformation would occur with the inauguration of The One™.

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A rocky first few weeks, Camille Paglia.

Speaking of talk radio (which I listen to constantly), I remain incredulous that any Democrat who professes liberal values would give a moment's thought to supporting a return of the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative shows. (My latest manifesto on this subject appeared in my last column.) The failure of liberals to master the vibrant medium of talk radio remains puzzling. To reach the radio audience (whether the topic is sports, politics or car repair), a host must have populist instincts and use the robust common voice. Too many Democrats have become arrogant elitists, speaking down in snide, condescending tones toward tradition-minded middle Americans whom they stereotype as rubes and buffoons. But the bottom line is that government surveillance of the ideological content of talk radio is a shocking first step toward totalitarianism.

Camille's puzzlement is immediately answered by her own assessment of Dhimmicrat arrogant elitism.

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Why Obama’s new Tarp will fail to rescue the banks, Martin Wolf, Financial Times, February 10 2009.

The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once. It is an important, but secondary, question whether the right answer is to create new “good banks”, leaving old bad banks to perish, as my colleague, Willem Buiter, recommends, or new “bad banks”, leaving cleansed old banks to survive. I also am inclined to the former, because the culture of the old banks seems so toxic.
    By asking the wrong question, Mr Obama is taking a huge gamble. He should have resolved to cleanse these Augean banking stables. He needs to rethink, if it is not already too late.

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An interview with Robert Barro, The Atlantic, Conor Clarke, Feb 5 2009.

This is probably the worst bill that has been put forward since the 1930s. I don't know what to say. I mean it's wasting a tremendous amount of money. It has some simplistic theory that I don't think will work, so I don't think the expenditure stuff is going to have the intended effect. I don't think it will expand the economy. And the tax cutting isn't really geared toward incentives. It's not really geared to lowering tax rates; it's more along the lines of throwing money at people. On both sides I think it's garbage.

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President Obama — Diminishing himself to serve Speaker Pelosi, Powerline Blog, Feb. 6, 2009.

Last night President Obama delivered a speech to the House Democrats in defense of their fiscal stimulus package. Obama's speech is so breath-takingly superficial and fundamentally dishonest that it must be read to be (dis)believed.
    Here is Obama's answer to the charge that the bill contains too much pork:
Then there's the argument, well, this is full of pet projects. When was the last time that we saw a bill of this magnitude move out with no earmarks in it? Not one. (Applause.) And when you start asking, well, what is it exactly that is such a problem that you're seeing, where's all this waste and spending? Well, you know, you want to replace the federal fleet with hybrid cars. Well, why wouldn't we want to do that? (Laughter.) That creates jobs for people who make those cars. It saves the federal government energy. It saves the taxpayers energy. (Applause.)
    Thus Obama answers the charge that the bill "is full of pet projects" by noting that a bill of this magnitude with no earmarks is unheard of. And, in response to the dozens of pork projects idenitifed by the bill's critics, he defends one minor one.
    But Obama was only getting warmed up. His major howler was this:
So then you get the argument, well, this is not a stimulus bill, this is a spending bill. What do you think a stimulus is? (Laughter and applause.) That's the whole point. No, seriously. (Laughter.) That's the point.
    Under this "logic," any bill that contains spending should be enacted because, by definition, it provides "stimulus." It doesn't matter how much stimulus is provided or when the stimulus will occur. This is quite possibly the most irresponsible position ever taken by a president on an economic issue.
    Just a few weeks ago, in his inauguation speech, Obama said that his touchstone for governmental action is how well it will work. Now the touchstone is whether it constitutes spending.

After 3 months of deliberation with his economic advisors, The One's™ policies can be summarized as: 1) we need to spend about $800B, 2) it doesn't matter how it is spent, and 3) anyone who opposes such profligate spending is misguided and needs to get with the program of paying-off all the Dhimmicrat special interest groups. Castigating those who wish to return to the "failed" policies of the past like tax cuts, which have successfully stimulated the economy every time in the past when they were tried, he then proposes to emulate the policies of FDR, which were a monstrous failure.

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The Impending Obama Meltdown, Victor Davis Hanson, NRO Online, The Corner, Feb. 4, 2009.

Some of us have been warning that it was not healthy for the U.S. media to have deified rather than questioned Obama, especially given that they tore apart Bush, ridiculed Palin, and caricatured Hillary. And now we can see the results of their two years of advocacy rather than scrutiny.

We are quite literally after two weeks teetering on an Obama implosion — and with no Dick Morris to bail him out — brought on by messianic delusions of grandeur, hubris, and a strange naivete that soaring rhetoric and a multiracial profile can add requisite cover to good old-fashioned Chicago politicking.

First, there were the sermons on ethics, belied by the appointments of tax dodgers, crass lobbyists, and wheeler-dealers like Richardson—with the relish of the Blago tapes still to come.

Second, was the "stimulus" (the euphemism for "borrow/print money") that was simply a way to go into debt for a generation to shower Democratic constituencies with cash.

Then third, there were the inflated lectures on historic foreign policy to be made by the clumsy political novice who trashed his own country and his predecessor in the most ungracious manner overseas …

Fourth, there was the campaign rhetoric of Bush shredding the Constitution — FISA, Guantánamo, the Patriot Act, Iraq, renditions, etc. — followed by "all that for now stays the same" inasmuch as we haven't ben hit in over seven years and can't risk another attack.

Fifth, Gibbs as press secretary is a Scott McClellan nightmare that won't go away, given his long McClellan-like relationship with Obama (McClellan should have been fired on day hour one on the job). Blaming Fox News for Obama's calamities is McClellan to the core and doesn't work. …

Six[th], Biden is being Biden. Already, he's ridiculed the chief justice, trashed the former VP, bragged on himself ad nauseam in Bidenesque weird ways, and it's only been two weeks. …

At home, Obama is becoming laughable and laying the groundwork for the greatest conservative populist reaction since the Reagan Revolution.

Abroad, some really creepy people are lining up to test Obama's world view of "Bush did it/but I am the world". …

This is quite serious. I can't recall a similarly disastrous start in a half-century (far worse than Bill Clinton's initial slips). … If he doesn't quit the messianic style and perpetual campaign mode, and begin humbly governing, then he will devolve into Carterism — angry that the once-fawning press betrayed him while we the people, due to our American malaise, are to blame.

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One last chance to save mankind, New Scientist, 23 January 2009 by Gaia Vince.

Q (Gaia Vince): Your work on atmospheric chlorofluorocarbons led eventually to a global CFC ban that saved us from ozone-layer depletion. Do we have time to do a similar thing with carbon emissions to save ourselves from climate change?
A (James Lovelock): Not a hope in hell. Most of the "green" stuff is verging on a gigantic scam. Carbon trading, with its huge government subsidies, is just what finance and industry wanted. It's not going to do a damn thing about climate change, but it'll make a lot of money for a lot of people and postpone the moment of reckoning.

Q (Gaia Vince): What about work to sequester carbon dioxide?
A (James Lovelock): That is a waste of time. It's a crazy idea - and dangerous. It would take so long and use so much energy that it will not be done. … The biosphere pumps out 550 gigatonnes of carbon yearly; we put in only 30 gigatonnes (5.2%). Ninety-nine per cent of the carbon that is fixed by plants is released back into the atmosphere within a year or so by consumers like bacteria, nematodes and worms.

Mr. Lovelock then goes on to propose an equally crazy idea for carbon sequestation which will never be implemented because it would require annual deforestation and replanting on a global scale.

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The Speech, Powerline Blog, Jan. 20^th, 2009.

The speech was classic Obama -- the kind of fine-sounding, frivolous fare in which the idea that we face specific trade-offs is dismissed as cynicism, even as we're told in the most general way of the need for sacrifice and to make tough choices. The debates in which serious people on both sides of the political spectrum have engaged for decades were dismissed as "childish," as if there exists some magic synthesis that everyone up until now has missed. Today, the contours of this grand synthesis went once again unstated.

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Powerline Blog

CO₂ emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. ... Every scientist knows this, but it doesn't pay to say so. -- Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan

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Rush Responds to General Powell

And you might even say that the Republican Party is in the situation it's in precisely because of the people like Colin Powell and John McCain and others who have devised this new definition and identity of the party which is responsible for electing Democrats all over this country. … So if we try to understand Powell's thinking, which is difficult since it's incoherent, we should have all voted for McCain in the primaries, and once he was nominated, we should have voted for Obama for president. -- Rush Limbaugh, December 15, 2008.

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On the Value of Scepticism, Bertrand Russell, from The Will To Doubt

The scepticism that I advocate amounts only to this: (1) that when the experts are agreed, the opposite opinion cannot be held to be certain; (2) that when they are not agreed, no opinion can be regarded as certain by a non-expert; and (3) that when they all hold that no sufficient grounds for a positive opinion exist, the ordinary man would do well to suspend his judgment.

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"For the most part, the sorry state of education in America doesn't really matter. Few people are educable and those who are will educate themselves, regardless of the schools." -- Orrin Judd

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Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity. - Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love by Robert Heinlein -

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"I started by reasoning that anything I don't understand is easy to do." -- Dilbert's pointy-haired Boss