Archive for the 'US Politics' Category

07
Nov
11

Herman Cain’s moment

The grave illness of boxing great Joe Frazier brings to mind his chief pugilistic adversary, the unforgettable Ali and the rope-a-dope tactic he employed in a match against George Foreman, of Foreman grill fame. The tactic should have been dusted off by Presidential candidate Herman Cain who could have played it to great advantage in the sexual harassment dust-up…

It is widely reported that Cain had a ten day heads up that the eleven year old S H charges would make news. What a great opportunity for a wily Cain to lie in wait for the media onslaught and calmly introduce himself to the mass of Americans who are not paying attention to the Republican pre-primary skirmishes and the tedious observations of cable news pundits.

With major media outlets irresistibly drawn to the seemingly wounded black conservative, Herman could have held forth expansively under the glare of hostile attention on the big stage; a primed and unflappable Cain could have swatted aside the nebulous and anonymous charges with impressive good cheer and equanimity — to great effect.

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01
Apr
11

Now it’s Progress

Victor Davis Hansen considers the recalibrated media take on U.S. interventionism that has accompanied Obama’s Libya actions. National Review Online, Mar 31. A snippet:

(e) Stuff happens: Many supporters of the Iraq War condemned Abu Ghraib as the poorly supervised, out-of-control prison it was. Lax American oversight resulted in the sexual humiliation of detained Iraqi insurgents. It was a deplorable episode, in which, nonetheless, no one was killed, and yet it took an enormous toll on the credibility of Bush-administration officials. But while the media were covering the Libyan bombing and the Middle East uprisings, a number of Afghan civilians allegedly were executed by a few rogue American soldiers. That was a far worse transgression than anything that happened at Abu Ghraib during Bush’s tenure — but it was apparently an incident that, in the new media climate, could legitimately be ignored. Obama made “stuff happens” an acceptable defense for those doing their best to run a war from Washington.

Read more here

31
Jan
11

Stealth government

Tony Blankley has a column today on ever more freedom-destroying regulation by Obama administration and a rare opportunity for conservatives to fight back. (Readers should know that your old friend, the incandescent light bulb is scheduled to become illegal, in a phased manner, beginning in 2012.) Blankley is leisurely in getting to his point, so I will quote last few sentences here:

“And to help [the Republican controlled House], the conservative media and think tanks need to bring much more focus on such abusive regulations. The administration and liberals generally are delighted to let the continuing re-regulation of America continue under the radar.

What we need on our side for fighting regulations is something like Brent Bozell’s Media Research Center (that acts as both a research center and clearinghouse that effectively monitors and publicizes liberal media excesses).

Many conservative think tanks do a good job of studying government regulation. But we desperately need big private funding to gather all that research and focus it upon the media.

With the right resources and attention, 2011 could be a banner year for the deregulation of American life.”
Read more here.

Here is more on unelected bureaucracies stealthily encroaching on freedom in short piece by Aaron Gee in American Thinker. A key sentence:
“One has to wonder if the reason the [FCC rules regulating the Internet] that were issued were so innocuous and provided so much leeway was to prevent a court challenge. If the FCC’s authority goes unchallenged the regulation of the Internet becomes a fait accompli.” Full article here:

31
Jan
11

Obama a Genius?

Bush’s “misunderestimated” formulation is rather quaint and endearing. It’s true that he’s no great light but neither have any of our other presidents over the last seventy years except the pilloried Nixon and possibly the execrable Carter (though his claim to be a “nuclear engineer” was a stretch). (Hoover was smart — a lot of good it did him.) And, of course, Reagan. His special gifts seem to transcend the matter of mere intellectual power. Examination of his prodigious output of carefully hand-crafted speeches over the decades belatedly gave the lie to mean spirited charges of intellectual mediocrity. I would suppose that Bush and most of the others have IQ’s about 115 or 120. The current occupant of the WH (you know, the one who refers to “corpsemen” and is markedly inadequate when delivering extemporaneous remarks) is in the same general league; his much vaunted intellect has more to do with marketing than mental acuity. Note well that there has been a remarkably thorough cover-up of every detail of his academic career. We are not permitted to see his undergraduate grades that merited admission to Harvard Law, where he produced no published work as Editor of the Review. His academic record at HLS is suppressed as well. There is no plausible interpretation of this other than that his academic performance was far from stellar and is being hidden because it weakens his brand. Otherwise it would be trumpeted from the mountaintops.

15
Sep
10

Standing for Nothing

Yesterday’s Delaware primary kerfuffle envisages a third party in America – The Milquetoast party – a new home for Democrats marginalized by the Stalinists who have hegemonized the Democrat party and RINO Republicans too weak-kneed — or strangers to principle — to support genuinely conservative candidates.




June 2023
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