Month: May 2009

The Obama Administration has another plan to screw poor people. He is working with Congress to drive the poorest people out of the used car market. The plan is called Cash For Clunkers. Committee members emerged from the meeting Tuesday claiming a modest victory. They said they agreed to embrace a “cash for clunkers” plan…

Via Glenn Reynolds, I learned that F. A. Hayek would be 110 today. (I celebrated by running three miles.) As Glenn also pointed out by way of irony, Barack Obama is helping Hayek in book sales. Irony or not, I think it’s only fair that the Obama administration should help sell Hayek’s books, for they…

One of my concerns over the years has been with the way freedom of religion and the Establishment Clause are being used to whittle away free speech. It started with the court’s banning the expression of religious views in schools (lest the government be seen as endorsing religion). But almost as if there’s a giant…

While Hollywood celebrities are not this blog’s shtick, I love old movies, and I dearly love the TCM channel. (It’s the only TV channel I like, and if it didn’t exist, I’d dump cable.) As it happens, yesterday was the 77th birthday of Robert Osborne, host of TCM Classics. The guy is always so crammed…

It is not Mr. Obama who will be guilty though. It is you. Obama has a plan to raise business taxes which I discussed in The War On Business Continues. As part of that plan the rules of evidence for innocence and guilt will be changed. You will be guilty until you prove you are…

In a piece titled “Words Matter in the War on Terror,” Raymond Ibrahim decries the inability of the Obama administration to call terrorists terrorists, or even use words like “jihadi”: Would the free world have understood the Nazi threat if, instead of calling them what they called themselves, “Nazis,” it had opted to simply call…

In today’s Detroit Free Press, liberal columnist Laura Varon Brown complains that she does not feel free to criticize anything Barack Obama has said or done, and that this is not healthy: Parties were more fun when George W. Bush was president. You could debate, argue even, praise and condemn, throw darts and laurels and…

I see that I’m not alone in noticing that the ferocity of attacks against Sarah Palin have increased since the election. Michael van der Galien notices that the attacks have been stepped up even more, and he offers an explanation as to why: …the attacks on Palin – all the litigation, attempts to destroy her…

I’m not much of a YouTuber. Sure, I link to YouTube videos all the time, but where it comes to making them, I’m just not motivated, and I don’t know why. You’d think that as a blogger I’d be more, um, extroverted about this, but I find the process a bit distasteful, almost exhibitionistic. Many…

Regular readers know how much I abhor bureaucracy and annoying regulations. Well, after reading this NYT obituary of ghost hunter Hans Holzer, I’m not sure I want to die: Mr. Holzer saw life on the other side in sharp detail. As he described it to the Web site ghostvillage.com in 2005, it is strangely like…

Bill Whittle gives Jon Stewart a history lesson. Probably the best 15 minutes of video I have seen in the last year. Stop what you are doing and watch it. H/T Instapundit Cross Posted at Power and Control

Don’t miss Clayton Cramer’s analysis of Nordyke v. King: You won’t find me saying nice things about the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals very often, so savor the moment. On April 20, Alameda County, California, “won” a gun control case that has many gun owners dancing in the aisles. King Pyrrhus of Epirus in 280…

It was disturbing to wake up this morning and see the headline “Obama revelling in U.S. power unseen in decades,” but alas, it appears to be true: WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Barack Obama is revelling in presidential power and influence unseen in Washington for decades. Barely 100 days in office, the U.S. president and his Democratic…

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I think the moral of this story is: don’t stand between old people and their medicine. Wait until word gets out that marijuana is Better Than Viagra. Well Viagra is a prescribable medicine. But Viagra can make you go blind. Going blind for sex seems to be rather a high price to pay. Marijuana has…

I found myself cheered up by an email from a friend with attached pictures of some of the most grotesque examples of extreme piercings and mutilations ever. Like this poor fool. I know it may sound insensitive, but that picture made me laugh at my own problems. I often think I’m neurotic and messed up,…

President Obama’s official popularity ratings may still be high, but people have grown tired of watching him on television. The story headline is “Obama’s ratings slide: press conference down 29%“: Audience interest in Barack Obama’s news conferences seems to be falling, with Wednesday’s press event drawing the president’s smallest primetime audience since his inauguration. The…

The Obama Administration has a brilliant new idea. Ban HFCs. UNITED NATIONS — The Obama administration, in a major environmental policy shift, is leaning toward asking 195 nations that ratified the U.N. ozone treaty to enact mandatory reductions in hydrofluorocarbons, according to U.S. officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press. “We’re considering this as…