Olbermann’s Ratings: Bad
Here's a chart that will explain how badly MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann is tanking:
Tough break, guy. It's probably because of how subtle Olbermann is in his views. He should really open up, let his hair down, and tell us what he really thinks about people who disagree with his view of the world.
Where’s all the outrage over dead soldiers now?
The media seems to only be upset about military deaths when a Republican is in office. Byron York of the Washington Examiner reminds us just how insistent the press (and Left) was during President Bush's presidency that we not "hide" the caskets of returning deceased soldiers, and how disinterested they are in covering the story now. Wonder why that is...
So far this month, 38 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan. For all of 2009, the number is 220 -- more than any other single year and more than died in 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004 combined.
With casualties mounting, the debate over U.S. policy in Afghanistan is sharp and heated. The number of arrivals at Dover is increasing. But the journalists who once clamored to show the true human cost of war are nowhere to be found.
I am completely on board with the notion that reminding Americans of the very real costs of this war is a good thing, but does the media really care? Was the push to get permission to publish photos of the caskets politically-driven? I hope not, but it's hard to imagine that it wasn't.
Is there a difference between Libya and America?
Mark Steyn thinks so.
President Obama said this during his speech to the United Nations General Assembly last week:
"I have been in office for just nine months – though some days it seems a lot longer. I am well aware of the expectations that accompany my presidency around the world. These expectations are not about me. Rather, they are rooted, I believe, in a discontent with a status quo that has allowed us to be increasingly defined by our differences."
Steyn's response?
Forget the first part: That's just his usual narcissistic "But enough about me, let's talk about what the world thinks of me" shtick. But the second is dangerous in its cowardly evasiveness: For better or worse, we are defined by our differences – and, if Barack Obama doesn't understand that when he's at the podium addressing a room filled with representatives of Iran, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Venezuela and other unlovely polities, the TV audience certainly did when Col. Gadhafi took to the podium immediately afterward. They're both heads of state of sovereign nations. But, if you're on an Indian Ocean island when the next tsunami hits, try calling Libya instead of the United States and see where it gets you.
This isn't a quirk of fate. The global reach that enables America and a handful of others to get to a devastated backwater on the other side of the planet and save lives and restore the water supply isn't a happy accident but something that derives explicitly from our political systems, economic liberty, traditions of scientific and cultural innovation and a general understanding that societies advance when their people are able to fulfill their potential in freedom. In other words, America and Libya are defined by their differences.
Gitmo stays open
Here is yet another classic example of the difference between liberal utopian visions of how the world should be...and the way things really are.
President Obama is unlikely to close the much-maligned detention facility at Guantanamo Bay in time to meet the self-imposed deadline of January, as his administration runs into daunting legal and logistical hurdles in moving the more than 220 detainees still being held there.
The difficulties in completing the lengthy review of detainee files and resolving other thorny questions mean the president's promised January deadline may slip, senior administration officials acknowledged for the first time Friday to FOX News.
The truth is that no one on the Left has a better idea on how to deal with enemy combatants who are NOT under the Geneva Convention, and have yet to offer a better place to house them.
Conando knocks his noggin
The Tonight Show's Conan O'Brien was knocked unconscious during a taping of his show Friday.
From the Associated Press:
O'Brien was being examined Friday at a hospital. The network declined comment on his condition or whether he had been released.
O'Brien issued a statement through NBC that indicated he was treating the incident lightly.
"Last thing I remember I was enjoying the play with Mrs. Lincoln, and the next thing I knew I was in bed being served cookies and juice" O'Brien said in the statement.
Letterman's ticker might give out at any minute, Leno isn't funny, Craig Ferguson is Scottish, and Jimmy Fallon is still laughing right now about one of his jokes from last night. Get well soon, Conan.
Meg Whitman wants to be CA’s governor
One of the best and brightest conservative commentators around is syndicated columnist and radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt.
In his latest article at Townhall.com, Hugh posted an important interview he did with the GOP's leading candidate for governor in California: Meg Whitman. This is a must-read, as the former CEO of EBay details her positions on many issues, but most specifically (and importantly), taxation.
An excerpt:
HH: All right, in terms of cutting taxes, which taxes would you suggest be first to put to the legislature to cut?
MW: Well first, we have to cut the business taxes for job-creating business of all sizes. We’ve got to reinstate and reinvigorate the R & D tax credit, we’ve got to make sure we provide tax incentives and credits for companies that hire displaced workers. But across the board, we have to look at business taxes, because as you know, we have the highest business taxes in the country. And then we have to look at personal income taxes, because those are the highest also in the country, and we have put a burden on hard working Californians that is just almost impossible for them to work out from underneath. You know, Californians are tapped out. They have no more money to give to Sacramento, and by the way, to Washington, for that matter.
Again, clarity. Californians know that large Democratic majorities are blocking tax relief in Sacramento, but anyone who campaigns on a firm promise of rollback is going to win the votes of those who are not dependent on tax revenues for their pay checks.
And finally, we talked about the judge-ordered drought in California's Central Valley, where water deliveries were cut off early this year because a federal judge ruled that those deliveries could hurt the endangered delta smelt. At least 40,000 Californians have lost their jobs as a result, and the devastation to America's breadbasket has been awful to behold. Arnold has been impotent, and has refused to even call for the convening of the "God Squad" which is provided for under the federal Endangered Species Act.
The GOP desperately needs fiscally-responsible candidates all across the fruited plains in 2010. But we must always remember that Republicans can let us down just as quickly as Democrats. Power does something to people, and it is up to all of us to hold anyone who would seek it accountable.
Here's Meg announcing her candidacy:
Jonah Goldberg calls President Obama out
The speech Barack Obama gave this week to the United Nations was, in the opinion of conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg, bad.
"The time," Obama assured us again, "has come for those walls to come down."
Walls often exist for a good reason. They mark clear lines between peoples and nations. The Berlin Wall was not built by us, but by those who could not tolerate liberty. It is good that it came down with our victory in the Cold War. But it would have been better to keep it up than lose that struggle.
Of course, Obama's objection isn't to physical walls but figurative ones. His real point is that the cult of unity that marked the worst excesses of his presidential campaign should go global. "Old arguments are irrelevant to the challenges faced by our people," he says. Rather, "the interests of nations and peoples are shared."
The problem with this notion of shared interests is not that it's untrue, but that it's a half-truth. Some interests are shared, others not. It was in Poland's interest for us to honor our commitment on missile defense. Obama concluded that it was better for us to appease Russia's interests.
I couldn't have said it better myself. Read the rest of his biting analysis here.
Jonah is also the author of the second best book in the last 10 years (the first being America Alone by Mark Steyn): Liberal Fascism. Here's a clip of the author himself discussing his best-selling book...
Show us your transparency, Congress
Our elected representatives had the chance yesterday to ensure that everyone, including themselves, would have at least 72 hours to view any new piece of legislation on health care before having to vote on it. Seems not only reasonable, but necessary.
Well, guess how that vote turned out with Democrats at the helm?
I get it that people are fed up with both parties, and I'm not suggesting that Republicans are innocent in all of the shenanigans on Capitol Hill these days...but liberal Democrats have controlled congress since 2006, and Washington for almost a year, but would anyone say anything about our nation's capital is more ethical or transparent?
Walter Williams on Michael Moore’s propaganda
Dr. Walter E. Williams is a voice of clarity and reason in a world gone Obama-mad. He teaches economics at George Mason, writes a weekly syndicated column, and frequently fills in for Rush Limbaugh on the most listened to radio show in the world.
This week Dr. Williams lays some intellectual groundwork for anyone considering seeing Michael Moore's latest "film", Capitalism: A Love Story.
An excerpt:
Aware of Michael Moore's previous films, I know that it will be at best a misleading story about capitalism. So let's do some defensive mental preparation, not about the film but what is and what is not capitalism.
Capitalism is an economic system characterized by private ownership and control over the means of production. The distribution of goods and services and their prices are mainly determined by competition in a free market. Under such a system the primary job of government is to protect private property, enforce contracts and ensure rule of law.
There has never been a pure free market capitalistic system just as there has never been a pure communist or socialist system, where there is government ownership of the means of production and each individual has equal access to society's resources. However, we can rank economies as to whether they are closer to capitalism or closer to communism or socialism. If one ranked countries according to whether they were closer to the capitalistic end of the spectrum or the socialistic or communistic end, then ranked countries according to per capita GDP and finally rank countries according to Freedom House's "Map of Freedom in the World," he would find a pattern that is by no means a coincidence. The people in those countries closer to the capitalist end of the economic spectrum have far greater income and enjoy greater human rights protections than those toward the socialist and communist end.
It is so critically important that we who appreciate the free market system, and see the dangers inherent to increasing the size and scope of our federal government, educated ourselves and those around us with REAL truths about capitalism. PLEASE take a moment and watch this fantastic video from the good people at the Acton Institute. I wrote about them summer and they've put together a wonderful, brief response to Michael Moore (and sadly, our current president):
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