Quickies

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




George Will reviews "Burning Down the House".

So, why isn't anyone from Fannie or Freddie behind bars yet? And why, despite being far, far worse, hasn't "Fannie/Freddie" supplanted "Enron" in the cultural lexicon as the term for criminally corrupt mismanagement?



Here's some more of that "new civility" we've been hearing about.




Naturally. Liberals start invoking religion when it comes to raising the debt ceiling.

Veteran Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel made an impassioned plea to religious leaders Friday, calling on them to lobby members of Congress and the Obama administration to remember the "lesser of my brothers and sisters" during this weekend's debt negotiations.

"What would Jesus do this weekend? Or Moses. Or Allah. Or anyone else," the New York congressman said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. "I don't want this book (debt negotiations) closed without the clergy having an opportunity to forcefully express themselves as well as I know they can do."

Nice of you to work Allah into the mix, Chuck. Equal opportunity religious/social justice pandering.





Out: double dip

In: muddling

The L.A. Times does its best to put on a sort-of-smiley face.

America is getting good at muddling through.

That was the economy's disheartening growth story in the first half of 2011. Things may not look much different in the second half.

So let's all just get used to it and muddle together.





Observation: It's nearly accepted as an article of faith in conservative circles that this country is a center-right country. Why is that faith tested, however, when we start talking about the brass tacks of reforming our entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid which looks to be on particularly precarious ground?

We're gonna have to do it, gang. Math wins. Math always wins.





From JTA:

Israel was included erroneously on a U.S. Department of Homeland Security terrorist watch list, a U.S. official said.

John Morton, the director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement division of the department, said Israel's recent appearance on a list compiled by the department's office of the inspector general was a mistake.

"The addition of Israel in the OIG’s list of ICE's 'Third-Agency Checks' (TAC) was based on inaccurate information provided to the OIG during the course of its audit," Morton said in a statement sent by e-mail to JTA. "The U.S. does not and never has considered Israel to have links to terrorism, but rather they are a partner in our efforts to combat global terrorism. The United States maintains close intelligence-sharing relationships with Israel in order to address security issues within its own borders and in our mutual pursuit of safety and security around the globe."

Uh, right. Of all the countries on this planet they could've mistakenly put on this terrorist watch list from, say, Guatamala to the Czech Republic to Nigera, it just happened to be good ol' Israel. Weird, huh?





And speaking of Israel...

...awww... Islamo-leftist Gaza blockade runners shut down.

Organizers behind the US 'Audacity of Hope' Gaza flotilla ship announced Wednesday they were throwing in the towel and would not be going to Gaza.

"The Greek government’s willingness to serve as the enforcer of Israeli’s naval blockade of Gaza made it impossible for this journey to happen," organizers complained on their website.

"Now our folks are beginning the journey home – some will arrive today, some tomorrow and others in the days ahead," the organizers wrote of the ship's 37 passengers and 4 crew.

The 'Audacity of Hope' was stopped by the Hellenic Coast Guard when it tried to leave port without permission on Friday.

We're missing something. They knew going in that Greece wasn't going to let them sail to Gaza. Why didn't they start out their "humanitarian aid mission" from Egypt?

Further proof of the completetly unserious and grandstanding nature of the world-wide pro-Palestinian useful idiot set. Flo-tards.




From IBD:

The engine of most of our job growth is still suffering two years after the recession supposedly ended. When will the White House and Congress start listening to the problems of small business?

Small businesses were once rightly seen as the entrepreneurial backbone of our nation's economy and way of life. But today they're demonized by the White House as "millionaires and billionaires," and the medicine that's been forced down their throats — $830 billion of stimulus, $1.7 trillion of Fed mad-money, $700 billion of TARP bailouts and $1.75 trillion in yearly regulation costs — has only made them sicker.

Small businesses bear the brunt of this failed experiment in Keynesianism. U.S. Bancorp's 2011 small business survey, just released last month, shows the vast majority of small businesses — 78% to be exact — "think the U.S. economy is currently in recession," despite Obama's whopping stimulus.

Worse, 85% believe things won't get any better next year.

(italics, ours)

This is what is meant by businesses "sitting it out".





Quite possibly the saddest thing we've read in a while.





Bad news: No more drunk puppy buying in New York's Greenwich Village. The potential buyers being drunk, that is, silly.





Congrats to Leslie of Temple of Mut who won Blog of the Day honors over at Legal Insurrection.

Hey, Leslie, you ought to go on vacation more often, huh?

More nanny state insanity.

Plant a garden in your front yard - go to jail.

Shane Atwell has the details, here. Video included.




And finally...

"That's racist" and NPR's complete inability to grasp a pop culture tag line.



That's probably it for now folks. Thanks for hanging our. We'll see you all tomorrow.