All That Is Necessary

Category: Uncategorized

  • I Can’t Believe I’m Writing About Obama’s Birth Certificate

    The predictability of the birthers’ reaction serves only to validate Obama’s refusal for two years to seek a waiver to permit the release of the long-form birth certificate.

  • Why Libya But Not Syria? For That Matter, Why Iraq But Not Libya?

    How do we justify allowing Assad to kill his own people after taking up arms against Gadhafi for doing the same thing? Syria — with its ties to Iran, its support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and its recent history of shuttling terrorists into Iraq to kill Americans — is if anything a more odious and important enemy than Libya.

  • Preparations for Easter at St. George’s

    Much thanks to Maplewood Patch editor Mary Mann for taking the visual images from St. George’s Palm Sunday observance and turning it into a spritely and thorough announcement of the upcoming Easter services. Cranky political commentary will resume here soon.  In the meantime, may Holy Week and Easter be a time of reflection and renewal […]

  • The U.S. Debt Bubble Will Make Sub-Prime Mortgages Look Like a Picnic

    Just how bad is the U.S. debt problem? Jim Manzi spells it out at The Corner: … we are sitting on the mother of all bubbles. Many, probably most, Americans anticipate a stream of consumption that will be provided for them into old age by the government (i.e., other taxpayers). Unfortunately, most American taxpayers do […]

  • In Search of A Thoughtful Liberal Economist

    A Facebook friend said Dean Baker is "a fine, clear-thinking economist, [and] he’s also an uncannily good press critic." Sounds great — I’ve been looking for a source for regular commentary from a left-leaning economist, to balance out the right-leaning observations of my classmate Greg Mankiw. But I’m afraid I’m still looking.

  • How to Tell When They Get Serious About Deficit Reduction

    “The joke re the original $38.5 billion deal was that, in the time it took to negotiate it, we added as much again in new debt (we’re borrowing about $4 billion a day). … At some point, you have to close a cabinet department just to show you’re serious. Instead, the governing class is sending […]

  • What Part of “Don’t Bury the Lead” Don’t You Understand?

    When leaving a voicemail message, many people will speed up while giving the all-important phone number — at the precise time when they should slow down. So someone says "nineseventhreefiveohfiveonetwoonetwo" as fast as they can, and you have to listen to the message twice, or even three times, to capture the number. What they should say is "nine seven three"… [pause] "five oh five"… [pause] "one two, one two".

  • A Brief History of Presidential Betrayal, Through the Prism of Andrew Sulllivan

    If Obama has lost Andrew Sullivan, has he lost the Left, the Right or the Center? For reasons that will become clear, I’ve been watching off and on to see what might happen when Obama does something that Sullivan perceives as a betrayal. The time may have come with Obama’s shocking decision to intervene in […]

  • Libya vs. Iraq: Geopolitical Insight in a Robotic Monotone

    He: "So Obama is killing civilians in a pre-emptive, unfunded war for oil, promoted by the dictators of the Arab League along with the UN, in support of some unidentified rebels who he’s never met with, and you are fine with all that?" She: "He is a man of peace. Did you know he even got the Nobel Peace Prize? Just like Morgan Freeman."

  • Astonishment at Obama’s War-Making Overwhelms Consideration of the Merits of It

    It was nearly three years ago that Senator Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, in part on the strength of having the purest "surrender-at-any-cost" position on Iraq. Who then could have predicted the following headline: "Nobel Peace Prize Winner Enters Third War"?