Quickies

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




So, about that jobs bill that we absolutely have to jump on right now... right now!

Well, damn that John Boehner

President Obama is still pressing Congress to pass his jobs-stimulus bill immediately, but Democratic Party leaders in the Senate once again have delayed taking a vote on the legislation and instead will take up a bill to punish China over its currency valuation.

Senators late Monday passed a bill to keep the government open into the next fiscal year and then adjourned for the rest of the week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said when they return they’ll take up the China measure rather than Mr. Obama’s jobs plan.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” said Mr. Reid, who is the chief Senate sponsor of Mr. Obama’s plan, but who said taking on China is a bigger priority right now.

You know, considering the abject failure of the original $800 billion Porkulus "jobs bill" which is mirrored by half, the son of Porkulus, perhaps the Senate Leader is doing the President a favor.





Here's some more of that post-partisan civility we've been hearing so much about.

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,”

Wild fires as causal evidence of climate change. Interesting.






If you've been reading this blog for a while, it probably won't come as a surprise that we are not entirely unsympathetic to the Occupy Wall St. crowd given our common gripe of the bailouts and corporatism/crony capitalism that have been the hallmarks of the Bush and Obama administrations. However, at the end of the day, you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find a virulent anti-free market, anti-capitalist Marxism that is driving this movement and it is there where we must part ways.

"Greed", they cry...

.... and speaking of greed, it always reminds us of this guy:

A conversation no one seems willing to have: Executing alleged terrorists who are U.S. citizens.

Let's get this straight: We have a Justice Department and an Administration that still very much appear to desire to close Gitmo and bring suspected terrorists to civilian trials, essentially affording them the same rights as U.S. citizens. Yet, we just whacked Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, U.S. citizens, in a drone strike in Yemen this past week.

And just so you know our hearts in the right place, we commend the President for his aggressive pursuit of terrorist ring leaders and continuing many of the policies of his predecessor. But killing U.S. citizens without due process? We need to talk about this.




W.C. Varones on corruption, Wall Street and Washington D.C.:

Liberals always paint this as an issue of tax policy and campaign finance reform. But that is a naive view. Where there is money and power, it will find influence. The Wall Street - Washington cabal is far too deep and intertwined to be restrained by campaign finance rules, and they will always find a way to push the burden of higher tax rates onto the middle class while buying loopholes for themselves. The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington is far more pernicious than any campaign contributions. Hank Paulson was a Wall Street multi-multi-millionaire before he came to the Treasury and used his position to bail out his Wall Street buddies. And Timmy the Tax Cheat knows that he'll have a seven-figure Wall Street job waiting for him as long as he does Wall Street's bidding as Treasury Secretary. That kind of giant personal wealth incentive makes any campaign contributions seem quaint by comparison.

Quote(s) of the day:

President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. has lost some of its competitive edge and gotten a “little soft.”

Mr. Obama, in an interview with WESH-TV in Orlando, said his administration has been tough on the country’s trading partners and tried to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”

To which Jonah Goldberg retorts:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

And whom we might add, his charges believe food stamps and extensions in unemployment benefits are an economic stimulus. Yeah, soft, indeed.




B-Daddy on the GOP field:

I am struck by who is not running in the Republican field, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin. It seems that each of these potential candidates has a cache of highly enthusiastic supporters that none of the current crop, Ron Paul excepted seems to bring to the race. The good news is that Republican voters tend to be grown-ups about these choices and are less likely to fall in love with a candidate who is all show and no dough like the incumbent. The bad news is that this will leave the tea party movement split, whose energy will be needed to unseat Obama. Further, since the eventual nominee is unlikely to please the tea party to the extent that Palin might have, the movement may suffer a loss of enthusiasm for participation in the political process. The other bit of bad news is that Republicans have shown a certain trend over the last 20 years. Two Bushes, McCain, and Dole all have that "I'm a conservative, but maybe not one to limit government growth and interference in the markets when it suits my purposes" quality.

Check out here what B-Daddy thinks qualifies the best Republican candidate.




That's it for today, gang. We'll see you all on Monday.