A Second Hand Conjecture

John McCain gets my vote.
What exactly is the problem with the American health-care system?
The problem is not that Americans don’t have fine doctors, medical technology, and treatments. American medicine is the envy of the world. The problem is not that most Americans lack adequate health insurance. The vast majority of Americans have private insurance, and […]

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John McCain was one politician I admired greatly. While I still believe that the man is a true hero, and while I still do applaud some of what he does, the veil has been lifted from my eyes for one major reason: McCain-Feingold.
Although I, like so many others, wish that we lived in […]

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Sooner rather than later.
And this:
Perhaps turning food into transportation fuel would make sense if massive amounts of grain spoiled every year from a lack of demand, but that certainly isn’t the case. Farmers love the higher prices that come from the new demand to fill gas tanks, but higher prices have consequences for poorer nations […]

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From a Wall Street Journal reader:
“The courageous thing for Congress to do would be to get rid of student-loan subsidies entirely. Then watch tuitions tumble towards ‘the affordable’ as academe realizes nobody’s throwing money at it any more.”
– John K. Lunde
Why is it so difficult for so many to miss this simple truth? If […]

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Over at Green Tech we get some figures that should be rather sobering for those who wish for alternative energy to be a significant source of energy in the near future:
Put another way, we’d need to equip 250,000 roofs a day with solar panels for the next 50 years to have enough photovoltaic infrastructure to […]

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Given the discussion at this post about Obama’s condescension, I suggest Tom Maguire’s roundup of the coverage of Obama making the mistake of speaking his mind about the rubes who he needs to vote for him:
I can’t believe that in all those Harvard classes they never emphasize that you can’t tell the rubes what you […]

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Video flashback from 2004. Bill Clinton:”If one candidate is appealing to your fears and the other one is appealing to your hopes…” You know where that’s going. Ahem. Clearly these were not carved in stone.
(HT: BigDog)

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All that Pejman has to say is correct. Ignore at your own peril.
And the fat lady is already belting out her arias.

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Sphere: Related Content

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Multiple times I have lauded the exceptional blog Booker Rising, masterfully managed by my friend Shay Riley. If you are looking for a wealth of information about the black community, a wide variety of viewpoints, articles and comments on related issues, then Booker Rising is a must-stop for you.
Shay has a feature called “Quote […]

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The Politico notes a rather amateurish effort from Hillary Clinton:

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe accused the Clinton campaign Monday of “shameful offensive fear-mongering” by circulating a photo as an attempted smear.
Plouffe was reacting to a banner headline on the Drudge Report saying that aides to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) had e-mailed a photo calling […]

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Regular readers know that I have been harping on the likely collapse in housing since this blog began. At this point I am hardly an outlier in being concerned, which means now the politicians and experts are ready to ride to the rescue. Proposals to increase regulation, bailout mortgage insurers, banks and even homeowners are […]

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Two funerals in a week. Work commitments. Continuing education. Coverage of a junior bridge tournament.
Who has time to blog?
Fortunately, my (younger) friend Shay is like the U.S. Postal Service: come rain or shine, she does it!
Millions of words have been written about Michelle Obama’s statement the other day […]

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Say it aint so!!! Da New Yawk Times Says So!!!
I wonder where they are on those benchmarks our Congress settled on? I also wonder how this places them in effectiveness vs our Democratically controlled Congress.
Using old-fashioned politicking behind the scenes, Iraq’s parliamentary leaders on Wednesday pushed through three divisive laws that had been […]

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The current dust-up over the Cuban-Che flag (flags?) hanging in the Houston campaign office for Barack Obama (opened by supporters, with actual staffers intended to occupy by next week), has spawned some interesting commentary. Captain Ed advised:
Oh, my. Barack Obama may want to call his new Houston office and suggest some decorating ideas…No, that’s […]

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Or: What I Learned About the World from Reading Historical Romances.
I learned that sometimes people get *more* uptight over time rather than less.
Victorians, according to custom and any number of novels, were concerned with propriety above all. Certain things were not spoken of and certainly the rougher aspects of life were hidden […]

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Karl Rove and George Bush and Dick Cheney will have many disastrous legacies, but one of the most despicable and enduring will be how they used fear to deeply and deliberately divide our country
I don’t think that it really does. The author is sort of famous and stuff but I prefer to ignore […]

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McQ:
The one and only reason to be for John McCain:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said the possibility of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) becoming president “sends a cold chill down my spine.”
I’d love to see Harry chattering and shaking on Jan. 20th of next year.

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(Cross Posted at Whatif?)
This time, however, blame GWB for something few of us consider.
 
 
Rarely in recent American history had a political leader received such a visible testing ground for the character of his leadership. Giuliani projected a profound, steely calm, and an all-encompassing competence—announcing the latest street closings or bus service changes one minute, pledging […]

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Gas flaring in the Niger Delta (photo: Ellie)
John Ghazvinian is a journalist and historian of considerable insight into African affairs. He also happens to have written one of the best recent books on the emergent international struggle for African petroleum: Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil (the paperback edition is due out in April). Whilst […]

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Kim at Wizbang links to this story about eugenic thinking in Brittan.
The comments came as the Lords debated an amendment, […] that would have protected unborn disabled children from abortion after the 24 week gestational time limit. The amendment was defeated by 89 votes to 22.
Under Britain’s abortion law, children judged to have some form […]

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(Cross Posted at Whatif?)
When John McCain and George W. Bush were vying for their party’s nomination, I was a McCain fan. How could a person not be impressed by the man who refused to leave Vietnam’s prison camp to stand by his men?
As time has progressed, however, my admiration for McCain lessened. […]

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Bill Clinton’s recent emergence as Hillary’s principal anti-Obama attack dog has left a lot of people somewhat uncomfortable. We’re not generally accustomed to seeing this sort of bare knuckled political brawling from a former president (all the effort seems to be wearing Bill out too). Eugene Robinson supplies a reason for Bill’s furious anti-Obama rhetoric: […]

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Jim Hollrah makes the interesting argument that the repeal of coat-n-tie dress codes at American colleges was the beginning of the New Left’s ruination of the academy, and the prerequisite for the revolutionary student politics of the 1960s.

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Bill Quick has an interesting discussion over at the American Conservative Party, on what such a party might look like.
Says Bill:
My gut feeling is that the traditionally American conservative viewpoint has been constitutional in nature, has tended toward limited, inexpensive government, and focused on individual liberty.
This can be an inclusive of a range of individual […]

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Social conservatives and particularly crypto-socialist social conservatives (or “populists” if you prefer), are inevitably going to be a minority faction within the GOP. But to their great credit they themselves recognize this. The implications of that self-awareness are dire for Huckabee however.
Because their interests and perspectives are in many ways peculiar to themselves within the […]

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Can Mitt win against Obama?
The thing is… just about any of them could maybe win against Hillary. Or lose against Hillary. But winning against Obama is more problematic. People *like* Obama.
And is Mitt really that much better than Obama? Would it *matter* who won?
Giuliani or Thompson, as different […]

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Byron York has a fairly instructive anecdote from South Carolina on Fred Thompson:
Last night I talked with Cyndi Mosteller, a strong social conservative who headed the Charleston County Republican Party from 2003 to 2007 and who supports McCain. When I asked about Thompson, she said. “He was the most anticipated candidate that I […]

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“Your sister thinks Huckabee is great.”
“Mom,” I told the phone, exasperated, “He’s not even Republican!”
My first participation in politics was a proudly worn “I (heart) DRNBGR” button that some son-of-a-Democrat defaced at a high school speech competition. (What gave him the right to wreck my property?) I went with my […]

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Fausta is fed up with the pundit’s question “who will be the next Reagan?” She mocks the impulse by asking “who will be the next Abraham Lincoln?” The genuine “next Reagan” of course wouldn’t be looking to the past at all, but to the future.

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Hillary and Edwards are slamming Obama after he heaped praise on Ronald Reagan –something that may not play well with the leftist base of their party, but was doubtlessly well received by the general electorate. One wonders if Obama shouldn’t have waited to express that opinion until after he had the nomination wrapped up however.

[…]

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Remember Unity08? It was “open source politics,” the internet-based third party with tech buzzwords in place of rhetoric. They captured press attention for awhile by talking a lot about “revolutionizing” the election with a web-based nominating convention and other silly gimmicks. Well, in the end it didn’t work out so well and was suspended due […]

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(cross posted at Risk and Return)
The most prominent Indian American politician in American history has now been sworn in as governor:
Bobby Jindal took the oath of office as Louisiana’s 55th governor at noon today, becoming the state’s first non-white governor since Reconstruction. Jindal, a 36-year-old Republican and Baton Rouge native, won the October 2007 primary […]

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Here’s some splendid news for those of us not delighted by the prospect of a liberation theologist takeover of the Republican Party. Rasmussen is reporting their new South Carolina numbers and Mike Huckabee has lost five points and Fred Thompson gained four since last week. Thompson now stands at 16%, Huckabee at 19%, with […]

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Mike Huckabee outlined his vision for a social conservative / “populist” takeover of the GOP to an Evangelical audience in Michigan. Mark Levin calls it deplorable, DiscerningTexan calls it destructive, and Riehl calls it theocratic. Well, well. It’s beginning to look like Fred Thompson’s aggressive criticism of Huckabee’s views may have inaugurated the removal of […]

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GamePolitics has an interesting story about a plan in the Indian parliament to ban violent video games. A pity, as I was just reading in Businessweek about the fantastic growth of the Indian gaming market. But that’s a bit of an old story: If you see consumer demand, regulate or prohibit supply. The result of […]

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One of my favorite bloggers has resurfaced, and I am hurt, hurt, hurt that D. A. Ridgely didn’t let his fans (okay, me) know to where he had disappeared. He is now blogging at Positive Liberty, and the blogosphere has now gone from diminished by his absence to a place where civil, insightful cultural and […]

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