 |
 |
|
|
|
||
Over at Slate (discovered via RealClearPolitics), Jack Shafer has a good piece on my favorite memory of inauguration day – Chris Matthews’s noisy, mind-bendingly nonsensical rambling on MSNBC. Here’s a taste:
Filed under: media, Uncategorized, War
An article by Bill Roggio appeared in the curiously named The Long War Journal yesterday, “Bin Laden Son Coordinated Ops with Iran.” It alleges that Iran has collaborated with al Qaeda to stage terrorist attacks, using bin Laden’s son as an intermediary. Roggio is a leading figure at the Foundation in Defense of Democracy, currently [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
Is there any better guide to sound policy than going with the opposite of Hugh Hewitt‘s instincts: Housing construction drives a huge portion of the economy, and is an extraordinary multiplier of economic activity. This isn’t debatable. But the stimulus package unveiled in the House of Representatives last week does nothing for the housing sector. [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
During his first year in office, President Obama can be expected to unquestioningly acquiesce to the consensus demanding he oversee an increase in public debt twice as large, as a percentage of GDP, as any year in the Roosevelt administration. He will do this because, as any successful politician, he is congenitally incapable of recognizing, [...]
“What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
I’ve never heard of a military operation being timed on the basis of a presidential Inauguration but that seems to have been the clock Israel used with their attack on Gaza. Obviously they didn’t want to rain on the new President’s parade by raining bombs on civilian targets. So what hath violence wrought in this “splendid little war?” [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
The new president’s inaugural remarks were underwhelming, but that’s for the best — if he had struck soaring rhetorical notes there’s no telling what the adulating crowd would have done. They might have proclaimed Obama president for life on the spot. Obama did make some gaseous promises about saving the world, but nothing much more [...]
Filed under: Politics
As President Barack Obama delivers his inaugural address to a nation filled with anticipation and hope, the vital signs of the loyal opposition appear worse than worrisome. The new majority of 49 states and 60 percent of the nation Nixon cobbled together in 1972, that became the Reagan coalition of 49 states and 60 percent [...]
Filed under: Politics
The Washington Monthly has a short feature on what books a newly inaugurated President Obama ought to read. Notable suggestions come from Andrew Bacevich (The Irony of American History, by Reinhold Niebuhr), Jacques Barzun (Santayana’s Character and Opinion in the United States and William James’s The Will to Believe), John Judis (Avi Shlaim’s The Iron [...]
Filed under: Books
Tony Blankley wants to bring back conscription — he imagines that the U.S. would have suffered virtually no casualties if we had sent 300,000 troops to Iraq. (H/t to Eric Garris.) Blankley may be held up as a conservative spokesman by Fox News, but I’ve lately been looking at back issues of the New Guard, [...]
Filed under: Conservatism, media, War