Quickies: the professional left goes bonkers edition

A round-up of news items, articles and columns that caught our eye this week.



Terrific... Katrina vanden Huevel is comparing conservative policies to slavery:

Forget about electoral mandates or campaign promises. This president has a historic mandate. Just as Abraham Lincoln had to lead the nation from slavery and Franklin Roosevelt from the Depression, this president must lead the nation from the calamitous failures of three decades of conservative dominance. This requires beginning to reverse the perverse tax policies that have contributed to gilded-age inequality and starved the government of resources needed for vital investments. This demands correcting destabilizing global imbalances, laying a new foundation for reviving American manufacturing and shackling financial speculation. It means ensuring the United States leads rather than lags in the green industrial revolution. And it requires unwinding the self-destructive military adventures abroad. The president must strengthen America's basic social contract in a global economy, not weaken it.”

And speaking of bad metaphors and saying mean and nasty stuff, Jonah Goldberg on the laughable No Labels crowd:

No Labels says it’s “about taking the politics out of problem-solving.” It is amazing how cavalierly people say this sort of thing, as if it weren’t the rationale behind pretty much every dictatorship since the dawn of man. Nearly once a week, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gives voice to his full-blown man-crush on China’s one-party dictatorship because — according to Friedman — the Chinese, unlike us, can implement “optimal” policies without getting bogged down in such distractions as elections, the rule of law, human rights, etc.

Abdication...



Because being the President during the holidays is, like, hard.

Michael Goldfarb tweets: "Finally, we have a black President again."

After what we thought was one of the worst Presidential press conferences we can recall this past Tuesday when The One whined his way through the tax compromise deal, he follows that up with this. Quite an accomplishment.

Left Coast Rebel has a great round up of reactions from around the interwebs to this bizarre scene that went down yesterday, here.




The Weekly Standard: Sure, Obamanomics is is a disaster for the economy but it's good for the environment so quit complaining.



The L.A. Times is of the opinion that the GOP's woes in California are due to voter rejection of party positions on social issues.

Allow the American Spectator to retort:

For four decades, the Democrats have controlled the California legislature. Back when Jerry Brown was first governor in the late 1970s, he signed an executive order permitting state employee unions to engage in collective bargaining. Thus began an era of growing clout for these unions and they are now the state's most powerful special interest. Many Democrat lawmakers owe their electoral success to the deep pockets of these unions. The result has been very generous pension plans and comfy salary increases for the union workers. The cost of these form a major part of the state's precarious financial position.

The Democrats now own the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel and as our friend KT is fond of saying, this represents the high water mark for statism. What do they have left in their playbook to get us out of this unholy mess?


Enjoy the rest of the day. We may check back in later.