Posts By Author » McQ
You’ll love this
6 Jun 2010 
3:15 pm
Another one of those violent, hateful Tea Party Events the left hates:
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Frank Rich v. Peggy Noonan – compare and contrast “competent”
30 May 2010 2:32 pm
Frank Rich has never seen an act by President Obama of which he didn’t approve or, if approval wasn’t really credibly possible, anything for which he couldn’t find an excuse. The oil spill is no exception:
Whatever Obama’s failings, he is infinitely more competent at coping with catastrophe than his predecessor. President Bush’s top disaster managers — the Homeland Security secretary, Michael Chertoff, as well as the notorious “Brownie” — professed ignorance of New Orleans’s humanitarian crisis a full day after the nation had started watching it live in real time …
Donkey, symbol of the Democratic Party, blown up in Gaza
25 May 2010 6:19 pm
Hey, it got your attention, didn’t it?
And yes a donkey did get blown up in Gaza and no, it wasn’t the doing of the Republicans (well, not that we know of). They’d most likely have blown themselves up.
Anyway:
A small Syrian-backed terrorist group in Gaza said its activists blew up a donkey cart laden with explosives close to the border with Israel on Tuesday, killing the animal but causing no human casualties.
Abu Ghassan, spokesman for the terrorist group, said more than 200 kilograms of dynamite were heaped on the animal-drawn cart. …
Democrats – talk about tone deaf
30 Apr 2010 5:11 pm
Sometimes I just love the Democrats. They’re so out-of-touch they’re just comical at times. After fomenting a near meltdown over the Arizona immigration law, with charges of nazism and cries of “show me you papers!” flying hither and yon, the Democrats introduce an immigration framework with what?
Improved papers, of course.
Yes, the Dems screwed the pooch and included a national ID card in their proposed legislation. And a biometric one at that. As someone characterized it, it’s a “super Social Security card”. Remember when you were assured that your SS card/number …
About GM’s supposed debt repayment
22 Apr 2010 9:31 am
You may have seen the announcement yesterday by GM’s CEO that it was paying back a portion of the money it had been loaned by the taxpayers (who borrowed it to loan it) to keep the company from going under and providing it the room for the government to own 61%.
The White House was exultant:
No one was cheering louder than the White House about General Motors’ repayment of $6.7 billion in loans from the federal government.
First thing this morning, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs alerted his 56,000 followers on Twitter of …
Mission impossible
14 Apr 2010 7:54 pm
Yesterday, in the New York Times and other media outlets:
President Barack Obama secured a promise from President Hu Jintao of China on Monday to join negotiations on a new package of sanctions against Iran, administration officials said, but Hu made no specific commitment to backing measures that the United States considers severe enough to force a change in direction in Iran’s nuclear program.
In a 90-minute conversation before the opening of a summit meeting on nuclear security, Obama sought to win more cooperation from China by directly addressing one of the …
Are we in “death panel” territory yet?
7 Apr 2010 9:34 am
David Leonhardt spends about a 1,000 words in the New York Times banging around the edges of what has to be done by government to cut health care costs. Or, as he calls it “In Medicine, the Power of No”. He wonders if we can every really learn to say “no”. And, of course, he’s talking about saying no to sick people, to patients – denying them care.
From an economic perspective, health reform will fail if we can’t sometimes push back against the try-anything instinct. The new agencies will be …
Who is the reactionary now?
19 Mar 2010 2:43 pm
Ezra Klein has this to say about “the process” now under fire by Republicans:
So far in the health-care debate, Republicans have attacked the legitimacy of private negotiations, parochial dealmaking, the budget reconciliation process, self-executing rules, the Congressional Budget Office’s analyses, and even the constitutionality of the legislation. It’s a good theory: Make people hate Washington and mistrust the legislative process and you’ll make people hate and mistrust what emerges from that process.
But it’s also dangerous. As Republicans well know, private negotiations between lawmakers, deals that advantage a state or a …
Presidential job approval numbers – what do they mean?
16 Mar 2010 7:07 pm
I’m sure everyone remembers the left’s constant trumpeting of negative presidential popularity polls during the Bush administration. Understandably, now that the shoe is on the other foot, they’re not quite so keen on those polls anymore. However there is an interesting point to be drawn from them. Take this week’s Rasmussen poll on job approval numbers:
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 25% of the nation’s voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty-three percent …
Health care bill update
5 Mar 2010 11:20 am
A few points about the status of health care reform. First, if the votes were there for passage in the House, the bill would now be law. That should tell you all you need to know about the present status of the bill. The votes aren’t there. The bottom line, however, is if the House manages to pass it, health care reform becomes law. At that point, reconciliation is moot. It will be part of the deal, but with or without reconciliation in the …
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Health Care Summit review
25 Feb 2010 5:23 pm
I’ve been watching and/or listening to the health care summit today and it became fairly obvious from the opening bell that there wasn’t going to be much of anything worthwhile or substantive accomplished – not that I’m surprised. 5 hours into it, it has been mostly the exchange of talking points. Right now I’m forced to listen to Henry Waxman give his. He’s claiming his version of the bill is the best and the Republican’s version sucks. Pretty much the way it has gone all …
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Russia: How’s that “Reset Button” working?
24 Feb 2010 5:53 pm
The push for international support for tougher sanctions against Iran seem to be going well with our good friends in Russia:
Russia will not support “crippling” sanctions against Iran, including any that may be slapped on the Islamic Republic’s banking or energy sectors, a senior Russian diplomat said Wednesday.
[...]
“We are not got going to work on sanctions or measures which could lead to the political or economic or financial isolation of this country,” Oleg Rozhkov, deputy director of the security affairs and disarmament department at Russia’s Foreign Ministry, told reporters.
“What relation …
Terrorism = Burglary
15 Feb 2010 7:38 pm
Counterterrorism Czar John Brennan made a comparison this weekend that has landed him in hot water. Speaking at the Islamic Center at New York University on Saturday and apparently in response to a question about recidivism among the Gitmo inmates who had been released, he said the rate was about 20%.
Ok, that’s arguable, but it is a number that has been tossed around by any number of people. That isn’t what got him in trouble. If we stipulate that the 20% of terror suspects released have returned to extremism or …
Quote Of The Day
9 Feb 2010 10:11 pm
The QOTD for today actually comes to us from a NY Times editorial in 2005 which clearly states their understanding of the job of an opposition party:
Mr. Bush has reacted by railing against Democrats for obstruction — as if Democrats are duty-bound to breathe life into his agenda and, even sillier, as if opposing a plan that the people do not want is an illegitimate tactic for an opposition party.
Why I believe that is exactly the point the right is now arguing. As witnessed by the editorial, the Democrats, lefty …
Eye On The Polls – Not Good News For Democrats Or Incumbents (Update)
8 Feb 2010 10:32 pm
A bunch of interesting polls have emerged today. One finds Obama at his lowest job performance rating yet. Of course, as you might expect, Republicans mostly disapprove of his job performance. Democrats, on the other hand, generally approve. But what gets his job approval rating to 44% approval, 47% disapproval in this Marist poll are the independents. They’re very dissatisfied with his performance – only 29% approve while almost twice that number, 57% disapprove.
Remember it was the independents who put Obama over the top in 2008. Also remember it was …
Republicans Prefer Tax Cuts Over A Balanced Budget?
4 Feb 2010 11:02 pm
That’s the buzz going around some liberal blogs about a Rasmussen poll which claims that a plurality of Republicans polled would rather see tax cuts and a deficit than a balanced budget and tax increases (one supposes the increases would be used to balance it. The history of our government says otherwise).
Of course I’m of the opinion there’s a third choice. Cut spending commensurate with the tax cuts and reduce the size of government until you’re able to balance the budget. Then start reducing the debt. …
GOP Should Embrace “Party Of ‘No’”
1 Feb 2010 9:33 pm
In the ’60s and ’70s when leftist anti-war protesters began calling the police “pigs”, police forces turned the tables and defined the epithet as “Pride, Integrity, Guts” thereby taking ownership of it. The GOP should take ownership of the “Party of ‘No’”.
Why? Because sometimes – in fact, many times – saying “no” to the opposition is not only responsible, it is an absolute necessity. In many cases, given what the ideological opposition attempts to pass into law, it is the job of the minority to say “no”. Bi-partisanship for bi-partisanship’s …
SOTU Fact Check
28 Jan 2010 8:06 pm
Surprisingly, AP does it (credit where credit is due). They cover the “spending freeze” (it would amount to less than 1% of the deficit) which we’ve covered in some detail. They also point out that the nonsense about the health care plan preserving the “right” of Americans to keep their doctor and their plan isn’t exactly true (we’ve covered that before as well). And they take on the claim about lobbyists which Michael has handled quite well below.
AP also talks about the deficit commission that Obama …
I Had To Laugh …
26 Jan 2010 5:25 pm
Marion Berry, Democratic Representative from Arkansas, has decided to retire from Congress voluntarily instead of chancing an involuntary retirement via the ballot box. Berry is considered a “blue dog” Democrat and is from a nominally conservative state whose voters have made it clear they don’t support the policies or agenda of this Congress or this president.
Berry relates an incident that struck me as the ultimate in hubris and arrogance:
Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not …
Democratic Disaray Attributable To Obama’s Lack Of Leadership
22 Jan 2010 10:58 pm
It is so obvious it frustrates me that others are too ideologically or politically blind to admit it. The reason the Democrats are in the shape they’re in today has to do with the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and his obvious lack of leadership.
Let me give you the latest example found in a Politico article today. It is, in fact, all about why the legislative agenda is in trouble and Democrats are skittish.
Congressional Democrats — stunned out of silence by Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts — …
Debbie Spend-it-now is selling America’s future to the Chinese
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