President Obama buttered up the American taxeaters with his syrupy State of the Union address on Fat Tuesday night by tabling a massive stack of new spending proposals that are selling like hotcakes with folks who will never have to pick up the tab. If enacted, these proposals will pancake employers, batter investors, and will [...]
Last November, the political science models that predict presidential-election winners broke. As has long been taught, no incumbent ever wins re-election after presiding over weak recovery from a steep recession and 1.5% yearly economic growth—namely President Obama’s record over his first term in office. So political scientists have to tend to their models. In the [...]
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But what is “best” for some is “worst” for others, and vice-versa. Monday, President Obama was sworn in for his second term. This event was a “best” for his stalwart supporters, such as Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, and is a sign of a [...]
Albert Jay Nock made famous the device called the Oxometer which is “a device to be installed wherever there is conversation or oratory going on, and the idea is that it automatically separates the bull from the solid substance of the discourse, leaving the latter as a residuum.” If Nock were alive today to use [...]
One of the more interesting arguments one hears these days from gun control advocates is that “there is no good reason” for anyone to own an “assault rifle” (or high volume ammunition clip). Sounds logical, no? What possible reason could one have for owning such a weapon, capable of killing so many people so quickly, [...]
The president is bent on raising taxes big time. The rationale? The deficit is getting out of control. Indeed it is. Since January 2009, when President Obama took office, the United States has run cumulative budget deficits of $5 trillion. Before that time, debt held by the public was $6.3 trillion. Now it’s $11.4 trillion, an [...]
“On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn out dogmas, that for far too long have strangled our politics.”—Inaugural Address, President Barack Obama 2009 No matter who wins at the polls today, the great loser of election 2012 will be Barack Obama and the [...]
James Ceaser, perhaps our most distinguished student of American politics on the conservative side, isn’t about predicting the outcome of elections. That’s actually hard to do. And those political scientists who predict outcomes correctly well in advance are almost always just lucky. This election, all the evidence suggests, is going to be very close and [...]
“If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” Mitt Romney fell on this Obama quote like an NFL lineman on an end zone fumble during the Super Bowl. And understandably so. Had Obama been channeling Isaac Newton—“If I have seen further than others it is because I am standing [...]
American Politics On the Democratic side, heading the ticket is a candidate known more for overblown, soapy rhetoric about class unfairness than for actually getting the economy moving, even with the nation stuck in torturous recession for four long years. In the vice-presidential spot is an Easterner with a dubious reputation who will [...]
by Michelle Obama “President Barack Obama loves to serenade his wife by singing songs from Al Green, Marvin Gaye and other R&B greats…Michelle Obama told ‘The Tonight Show’ host Jay Leno…he also sings…even ‘a little Stevie.’ That’s Stevie Wonder, for the uninitiated.” “’He likes the classics,’ she explained.” –From The Daily Mail (UK) […]
Nowadays, reviewing so topical a book six long months after its publication may seem like commenting on Clarendon’s circa-1680 ‘Historie of the Greate Rebellion,’ but Bob Woodward’s Obama’s Wars: The Inside Story still offers current value to the cognoscenti, especially in what is glossed over or remains unsaid. What seems intended for foreign-policy wonks is, [...]
Last week, the US Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB) issued a statement saying that military intervention in Libya “appears to meet” the just-cause criterion of Catholic teaching on just war, cautioning, however, that it has “refrained from making definitive judgments” in light of “many prudential decisions beyond our expertise.” Additionally, this past Sunday, Pope Benedict [...]
John Willson’s most recent post makes me want to revive the Whig Party. Well, at least the part of the Whig Party that knew that executive power could be readily abused. Our earlier Whig allies once called Andrew Jackson, “King Andrew.” Somehow, this always rubbed me the wrong way, as I often think of figures [...]