Author: McQ

Another one of those violent, hateful Tea Party Events the left hates:

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

That didn’t take long. After essentially ignoring Senate Republicans for a year (well except when they thought they could pick one or two off to help them make something appear “bi-partisan”), Democrats are now ready to lecture Republicans about their new “responsibility”. In a talking points memo issued to Democratic Senators today, they lay out […]

AP has just called the Massachusetts Senate race for Republican Scott Brown (9:25 pm) who looks like he’ll end up with anywhere from a 5 to 7 point win. Probably the most interesting thing I saw during the coverage was feedback during a Frank Lunz group on Fox (I watched MSNBC most of the night […]

There’s a very interesting but probably little noted piece at Fox News by Dr. C.L. Gray, who is, interestingly enough, the president of Physicians For Reform. His general premise is that while reform is needed in the medical field, what Congress is chasing is not at all the answer. And he uses Medicare as the […]

There is a lot of analysis going on about Obama’s first year and why, it seems, his job approval numbers are so dismal. And why, given the promise he brought to the White House, at least according to the PR faithfully pushed by his campaign, are Democrats looking at the possibility of large net losses […]

It would appear that long-shot Republican Senate candidate Scott Brown has a fighting chance of winning the “Ted Kennedy Seat” in Massachusetts. Brown reminded the moderator that the seat was, in fact, “the people’s seat”, not Ted Kennedy’s during a recent debate. And, according to the latest Rasmussen poll, Brown is within 2 points of […]

Why when you’re a part of a favored special interest group of course: Unions tentatively struck a deal Tuesday to exempt collectively bargained healthcare plans from a tax on high-cost plans expected to be used to help raise revenue for the healthcare overhaul. The left constantly clamors for “fairness” but quickly throws such concerns under […]

Today the Wall Street Journal asks what many of us have been asking for quite some time — why aren’t the numerous and specific warnings about the real cost and destructiveness of the proposed health care plan being heeded? Of course the simple answer is those who are determined to take health care under the […]

Probably not. But the probability that the cold weather the world is experiencing might be part of a multi-decadal oscillation (MDO) and a natural cyclical occurrence puts a real dent in the so-called “science” of man-made global warming. I found it interesting that over the weekend, the New York Times went to great lengths to […]

The ever entertaining Ezra Klein, charter member of the juice-box mafia, and apparently not a history major says: I’ll just note that Democrats will definitely lose their supermajority sooner than later. If not, something is going seriously wrong in the system. A competitive, two-party democracy shouldn’t have long periods of single-party dominance. The mid-20th century, […]