Thomas Sowell from NRO:

Among the many new “rights” being conjured out of thin air, a new one seems to be a “right” to win.

Americans have long had the right to put their candidates and their ideas to a vote. Now there seems to be a sense that your rights have been trampled on if you don’t win.

Hillary Clinton’s supporters were not merely disappointed, but outraged, when she lost the Democrats’ nomination to Barack Obama. Some took it as a sign that, while racial barriers had come down, the “glass ceiling” holding down women was still in place.

Apparently, if you don’t win, somebody has put up a barrier or a ceiling. The more obvious explanation of the nomination outcome was that Obama ran a better campaign than Hillary. There is not the slightest reason to doubt that she would have been the nominee if the votes in the primaries had come out her way.

As the election approached, pundits warned that, if Obama lost, there would be riots in the ghetto. We will never know. But since when does any candidate have a right to win any office, much less the White House?

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From National Review:

Iraq’s cabinet approved a security pact to keep U.S. troops in the country another three years. The agreement goes now to the parliament, where it seems likely to win approval.

The United Nations mandate under which American troops were operating lapses at the end of the year. If we hadn’t reached an agreement with the Iraqis, our troops no longer would have been able to operate in the country. The negotiations were long, complex, and highly controversial within Iraq. That they were successfully concluded is a blow to the schemers in Iran — and to their cat’s-paw, Moqtada al-Sadr — who did all they could to torpedo the pact. Continue Reading →

This is a few days old, but I think Sir. Elton John has an interesting and insightful opinion on Prop 8.

From USA Today:

NEW YORK — Elton John, accompanied by his longtime partner, David Furnish, had some choice words about California’s Proposition 8, the ban on same-sex marriage that passed on Nov. 4.

In December 2005, John and Furnish tied the knot in a civil partnership ceremony in Windsor, England. But, clarified the singer, “We’re not married. Let’s get that right. We have a civil partnership. What is wrong with Proposition 8 is that they went for marriage. Marriage is going to put a lot of people off, the word marriage.”

John and Furnish, and their two cocker spaniels, Marilyn and Arthur, were in town for Tuesday’s annual benefit for the Elton John AIDS Foundation.

“I don’t want to be married. I’m very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership,” John says. “The word ‘marriage,’ I think, puts a lot of people off.

“You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships.” [Read More]

The LA Daily News reports on the “motley crew” of mayoral candidates for the March ’09 election.

With Grove and Americana developer Rick Caruso out of the race (he wasn’t really in the race, but he was thinking about it), LA Mayor Antonio Villar is almost guaranteed reelection. The  race is about money, and Villar has enough to run his campaign and shrug-off debates with opponents. Villar said in a recent statement kicking off his reelection campaign,

“Whether you like me or don’t and think I’m in front of a camera or whatever it is, you have to look at what we’ve done these last three years.”

It’s true that he loves to be in front of the cameras (and behind the scenes, wink wink), but, he’s running Los Angeles into the ground. Our schools are failing, we’re throwing millions of dollars in the garbage with hokey mass-transit schemes (light rail and the “subway to the sea”), and under Villar there is no end in sight.

Walter Moore, a business trial lawyer, is the only candidate that has significant support and funding. But Moore’s $160,000 doesn’t compare to Villar’s $2.3 million. Moore’s most important issue is over-turning Special Order 40, the “sanctuary city” law. It’s an important issue, but it may not be enough to carry him to a win in March. Especially if he continues to be completely ignored by the mainstream media.

Mr. Moore is a regular guest on many local conservative radio shows.

A lemon of a bailout:

Finally, the outlines of a coherent debate on the federal bailout. This comes as welcome relief from a campaign season that gave us the House Republicans’ know-nothing rejectionism, John McCain’s mindless railing against “greed and corruption,” and Barack Obama’s detached enunciation of vacuous bailout “principles” that allowed him to be all things to all people.

Now clarity is emerging. The fault line is the auto industry bailout. The Democrats are pushing hard for it. The White House is resisting.

Underlying the policy differences is a philosophical divide. The Bush administration sees the $700 billion rescue as an emergency measure to save the financial sector on the grounds that finance is a utility. No government would let the electric companies go under and leave the country without power. By the same token, government must save the financial sector lest credit dry up and strangle the rest of the economy.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is willing to stretch the meaning of “bank” by extending protection to such entities as American Express. But fundamentally, he sees government as saving institutions that deal in money, not other stuff.

Democrats have a larger canvas, with government intervening in other sectors of the economy to prevent the cascade effect of mass unemployment leading to more mortgage defaults and business failures (as consumer spending plummets), in turn dragging down more businesses and financial institutions, producing more unemployment, etc. — the death spiral of the 1930s.

President Bush is trying to move the Libor or the TED spread, which measure credit flows. The Democrats’ index is the unemployment rate.

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From James Lewis at the American Thinker:

Suppose you’ve been living under the protective wings of a benevolent superpower for sixty years. And suppose you’ve used that big half century to take off on an endless vacation — spending all your tax money to buy votes for the socialist Ruling Class. It’s been one long, grand, drug-infested, sex-drenched, self-indulgent, tabloid party scene. Any time danger threatens you look to Washington for protection. The rest of the time you noisily abuse those Yankee imperialists, merely to boost your fragile ego.  Corruption has become pervasive.
That’s Europe today.
What a sweet deal.
But now you see your guardian superpower electing a guy who wants to follow your example. Whooops! Time to sober up. Fast. Yes, you went hoarse cheering Obama’s ego trip at the Berlin Victory Monument, because you love the idea that O will teach America to love Eurosocialism forever and ever. But shivers are running up and down your spine — because if he is what you think he is, America won’t be there any more to save you. It will just slide into vegetarian nihilism and leave Europe to the New Soviet Empire.
Europe would crumble like a soggy crouton without America’s commitment to its defense. We saw that happen three times in the 20th century, and the bad news is that it’s starting again. Real danger is at the gates; Europe’s Ruling Class is in denial; and half of it is preparing to surrender to the Russians or the Muslim fascists, whichever gets there first.

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I usually try my hardest to ignore The New York Slimes, the nausea induced by their complete lack of journalistic integrity is too much to stand. But, recently David Brooks and Thomas Friedman have been writing good stuff. I posted one of Friedman’s columns a few days ago, and today my uncle e-mailed me Brooks’ and Friedman’s columns on the auto industry, they are both worth posting here.

Friedman argues that mismanagement at the Big 3, in addition to the failure of Michigan’s entire congressional delegation to do anything besides follow the demands of the companies and the UAW, have led to the current crisis. He says that if we are to send taxpayer dollars to the Big 3, the money must include some conditions: firing the Board and Management, stripping contracts from the Unions and re-negotiating, appointing a “czar” with “broad powers” to revamp the industry, and forcing the companies to get rid of gas-guzzlers and invest in “innovation.”

But what about Bankruptcy!? The United States, as David Brooks rightly asserts, already has a system for rescuing those who have fallen on hard times, or companies that have failed for any reason. It’s called bankruptcy, and it is basically a time-out in which one can restructure, re-organize and come back leaner, stronger and more efficient. In the free-market we have what Brooks calls “creative destruction,” breaking down the old and worn, for the new and efficient; this is something that can only work in a competitive market. Keeping dead companies afloat on taxpayer dollars kills competition, and wastes money that could be used for real innovation. Brooks offers two options in his closing:

Is this country going to slide into progressive corporatism, a merger of corporate and federal power that will inevitably stifle competition, empower corporate and federal bureaucrats and protect entrenched interests? Or is the U.S. going to stick with its historic model: Helping workers weather the storms of a dynamic economy, but preserving the dynamism that is the core of the country’s success.

Let’s hope the Democrats will choose the latter. Like my uncle said in his e-mail:

People voted for democrats and change is coming,
Unfortunately, it is the worst kind of change.

An update on the Georgia run-off from Human Events:

Sen. Barack Obama may be our President Elect but election season isn’t over quite yet. A Dec. 2 runoff is being held in the sate of Georgia because neither incumbent Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R) nor challenger Jim Martin (D) obtained the majority required under state law in the Nov. 4 election.

Yesterday Sen. John Ensign (R- Nev), and Sen. Chambliss held a conference call to briefly update the media on the status of the campaign and take questions.

Chambliss said that his campaign feels “very good about the fact that [we] beat Jim Martin by 115,000 votes, and obviously assuming that we get those folks back to the polls on December the 2nd or beginning next week with the early voting then we are going to be fine.” [Read More]

Sen. Chambliss needs your help! [Click here to contribute]

From Victor Davis Hanson:

Excuse me if i remain unmoved by the misguided religious fervor.

Just one punch of the ballot is all it took. Now suddenly almost every one, here and abroad, is supposed to appreciate the newfound morality of the American people, change their own prior wicked ways, and do what they must for newly elected Barack Obama.

Some columnists are now putting Europe, Russia, China — and the whole world — on moral notice: we Americans did the right thing in electing the first African-American president and a charismatic, hip, commander-in-chief. They must now, too — or else!

Our divine edict from on high is simple: O wide world of little faith: Don’t blow it! So Europeans buck up for Barack, and get back in Afghanistan! Illiberal Russia, hands off those democracies on your borders and don’t make Barack do something we will all regret later! China, keep Barack’s air clean and don’t dare burn any more dirty coal!

Excuse me?

The world may be temporarily awestruck with the wise and all-powerful Obama, but it’s not quite ready to coalesce into a kinder, gentler global family — one people, under one Messiah, indivisible, with peace and justice for all.

In fact, Vladimir Putin doesn’t care a whit that Barack Obama is a path-breaking African-American, much less the first person of color to be an American president. The Chinese can’t quite appreciate in translation Obama’s mellifluous cadences. France’s cool Sarkozy isn’t swayed much by the Obama sunglasses, snazzy polo shirt, or nifty outside jump shot.

All these states have interests — not deities. For the most part, either their enmity with or fondness for the United States antedated George Bush. The world’s mental map wasn’t erased away when Bush took power. Being the planet’s most powerful democracy, and a free and confident world peacekeeper, either excites admiration or earns envy — and even the most crude or the most elegant American president can’t change much that simple fact of global human nature.

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