Went almost a week without posting. Didn't hurt a bit. Felt good, in fact. But it does mean there's some stuff saved up...
On our nation's financial condition, which the White House sees as anywhere from "catastrophic" to "sound", depending on whether the president needs to pass a stimulus bill or heed advice that he sound reassuring, even his political supporters are pessimistic. Paul Krugman for one has seen the new Geithner plan, and says it won't work.
Steyn is required reading with "The Outrage Kabuki", saying "The first two months of the Age of the Hopeychange have been an eye-opener. I expected it to be ideologically distasteful to me, but I didn’t expect it to be so inept." And Matt Continetti and Jim Manzi are suggesting practical alternatives to our budget and bailout policies that are worth considering.
Victor Davis Hanson and Scott Johnson on feeling depressed in the Age of Hope and Change. Tom Smith is more optimistic, in part because the same old media gatekeepers no longer man the gates, and self-publication and blogging will be a force for freedom going forward.
Post-partisanship in action: South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford wanted to use some of the stimulus money to pay down his state's burdensome debt, rather than expand state programs only to lose federal funding down the line. He describes what happened in a WSJ op-ed:
Last week I reached out to the president, asking for a federal waiver from restrictions on stimulus money. I got a most unusual response. Before I even received an acknowledgment of the request from the White House, I got word that the Democratic National Committee was launching campaign-style TV attack-ads against me for making it.Is this the new brand of politics we were promised? Instead of engaging with me and other governors on the merits of our dissent, I am to be attacked in television ads? In the end, I just don't believe a problem created by too much debt will be solved by piling on more debt. This doesn't strike me as an unreasonable or extremist position.
Could it have more to do with the perception that Sanford is an appealing national political figure for the Republican Party? Never too early to start the sliming.
James Kirchick on the sad legacy of the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa.
As details emerge about the apparent involvement of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn in a 1970 Weather Underground bombing of a San Francisco police station, the Obama Justice Department has contacted the San Francisco Police Officers Association, and told them not to talk about the still officially unsolved case. Why would that be?
If Obama doesn't stop repairing all those tattered relationships with our allies, we'll soon have none left at all. This snub of Sarkozy seems more clumsy than calculated, but so far, pretty much everything Obama has done with our allies has been clumsy. OK, man...our expectations have been sufficiently lowered since January. Most of us would settle for a little competence right about now.
Meat Bracketology: "...if we weren't meant to eat animals, how come they're all made out of meat?"
Posted by dan at March 23, 2009 8:47 PM