Category — Features

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.

[Read more →]

The anthems of all five branches of the US Armed Forces:

Thank you to all of our veterans and soldiers who are currently fighting. With out you the world would be much less free.

From Ken Blackwell:

Post-Racial Preference America

Race is not an insurmountable obstacle to success in today’s America.

Two things are evident from the 2008 election. The first is that the American people voted for change, embodied in President-Elect Barack Obama. The second is that this is still a center-right country, shown by the success of traditional values ballot initiatives. This center-right orientation will compel our new president-elect to make difficult choices next year, especially regarding racial preferences. [Read More]

From Thomas Friedman:

So, I was speaking to an Iranian friend about what a mind-bending thing it must be for people in the Middle East to see Americans, seven years after 9/11, electing someone named Barack Hussein Obama as president. America is surely the only nation that could — in the same decade — go to war against a president named Hussein (Saddam of Iraq), threaten to use force against a country whose most revered religious martyr is named Hussein (Iran) and then elect its own president who’s middle-named Hussein.

Is this a great country or what?

And it took Friedman the election of Barack Obama to figure this out? Besides that, it’s a good article; you’d think he was a conservative. [Read More...]

Congratulations to WFTV Anchor Barbara West for exposing Joe Biden as the Socialist/Democrat hack he is:

That, my friends, is what Senator Biden is famous for: Incoherent verbal diarrhea. “What you just witnessed is classic Senator Biden.” For this excellent interview, WFTV has been cut-off by the Obama campaign. Fairness-Doctrine here we come…

[from Ari]

Charles Krauthammer sums it up:

Contrarian that I am, I’m voting for John McCain. I’m not talking about bucking the polls or the media consensus that it’s over before it’s over. I’m talking about bucking the rush of wet-fingered conservatives leaping to Barack Obama before they’re left out in the cold without a single state dinner for the next four years.

I stand athwart the rush of conservative ship-jumpers of every stripe — neo (Ken Adelman), moderate (Colin Powell), genetic/ironic (Christopher Buckley) and socialist/atheist (Christopher Hitchens) — yelling “Stop!” I shall have no part of this motley crew. I will go down with the McCain ship. I’d rather lose an election than lose my bearings. [Read more →]

From Victor Davis Hanson:

Lame-duck Republican President Bush’s dismal poll ratings have descended to those of Harry Truman’s when he left office. The Democratic majority in Congress will probably widen after the election. Republican nominee John McCain has not run a dynamic campaign. Gen. Colin Powell, George Bush’s former secretary of state, has now enthusiastically endorsed Barack Obama.

The country is in two unpopular wars — amid the worst financial panic of the last 80 years. Not since prophet of change and newcomer Jimmy Carter ran against Gerald Ford (post Watergate and the lost Vietnam war) have voters been so eager for a shake-up.

Why then is the charismatic Barack Obama not quite yet a shoo-in?

Easy. Voters apparently still don’t know who Obama is, or what he wants to do — and so are still not altogether sure that Obama is the proper antidote to George W. Bush. After more than a year of campaigning, he still remains an enigma. [Read more →]

The latest IBD/TIPP Poll: Obama 44.8, McCain 43.7!

“Obi Wan Kenobi,” mentor to the National Review’s Jim Geraghty, chimed in yesterday with this:

There’s That ‘McCain Pulls Even’ Poll

Obi Wan, yesterday:

“Believe me, there is someone in the Obama campaign who is deathly afraid of the ‘McCain pulls even or goes ahead’ poll.”

Obi Wan had said that he felt the last debate had gone well for McCain, with “Joe the Plumber” finally illustrating the economic differences between the candidates, and illustrating that Obama would try to tax and spend his way out of a recession…

AP, not too long ago:

The presidential race tightened after the final debate, with John McCain gaining among whites and people earning less than $50,000, according to an Associated Press-GfK poll that shows McCain and Barack Obama essentially running even among likely voters in the election homestretch.

The poll, which found Obama at 44 percent and McCain at 43 percent, supports what some Republicans and Democrats privately have said in recent days: that the race narrowed after the third debate as GOP-leaning voters drifted home to their party and McCain’s “Joe the plumber” analogy struck a chord.

Three weeks ago, an AP-GfK survey found that Obama had surged to a seven-point lead over McCain, lifted by voters who thought the Democrat was better suited to lead the nation through its sudden economic crisis.