Thursday, January 26, 2012

Saving America, SS and Medicare

Since Mitt Romney is doing such a lousy job defending his capitalist successes, Daniel Henninger does it for him in the Wall Street Journal ("How Bain Capital Saved America"). This article appeared last week (1/18).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204555904577169032997242246.html?KEYWORDS=bain+saved+america

Also - A couple of juxtaposed quotes.

"We have a plan. It's called Medicare." - Nancy Pelosi

"The mortal enemies of Social Security and Medicare are those who, in contempt of the plain arithmetic, continue to mislead Americans that we should change nothing. Listening to them much longer will mean that these proud programs implode, and take the American economy with them. It will mean that coming generations are denied the jobs they need in their youth and the protection they deserve in their later years."

Mitch (Take his wife, please!) Daniels in his response to President Obama's SOTU.

Here's the entire superlative speech.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSAmkDUi4PQ

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Case For Obama

Conrad Black writing at NRO.

"I am grateful to Michael Kinsley for presenting in The New York Review of Books two weeks ago the argument for reelecting Obama, since I was unable to think of one myself: “health care reform, tough new financial protection for consumers,” guiding “the economy through its roughest period in eighty years with moderate success (who could have done better?),” ending “our long war in Iraq,” and avenging “the worst insult to our sovereignty since Pearl Harbor.” Obama is, said Kinsley, “a president who faced an opposition of really spectacular intransigence and downright meanness.”

So this is the argument: a catastrophe in health care, a lot of intrusive window dressing for consumers, $5 trillion of deficits to hold the increase in unemployment to about 5 million, a lengthy and pre-planned departure from Iraq that many (not including myself) see as a scuttle, and the admitted tedium of dealing with the congressional Republicans after the bracing depelosification of the midterm elections. The only element of it that isn’t simply rubbish is killing bin Laden, for which the president certainly deserves credit."

Saturday, January 7, 2012

The Empathetic Left

Remove the "Em".

One thing I've noticed is that Mark Steyn's weekly Saturday online columns on NRO are better than his biweekly efforts in the print version of National Review. This may have something to do with the spontaneity of his reaction to breaking events as opposed to the more leisurely commentary he posts in NR.
In his latest NRO piece he focuses and expands upon Fox News' Alan Colmes' and columnist Eugene Robinson's disgraceful attack on Rick Santorum.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/287410/left-s-so-called-empathy-mark-steyn