Author: McQ

Barack Obama in Fargo, ND today: “I’ve always said that the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed,” he said. “And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders […]

Bogged down with a failing health care system with huge waiting times, Brits are sure they’ve been saved by a new EU directive: Patients will be able to escape NHS queues by demanding treatment anywhere in the European Union without the prior approval of a doctor, under proposals to guarantee health rights unveiled today in […]

Investor’s Business Daily brings us the latest from probably the worst Majority Leader the Senate has seen in a very long time: The Dr. No of the drill-nothing Congress tried to deflect the issue of rising gas prices Monday by telling Fox Business News that there are costs we should worry about besides those stemming […]

The Heritage Foundation takes a look at what Obama promises for taxes should he be elected and what that means: Obama’s tax plan has two major components. First, he promises to end the Bush tax cuts, allowing the top two tax rates to return to 36% and 39.6%. Second, he promises to end the Social […]

Jennifer Rubin, at Contentions, points out that Paul Krugman, like David Brooks, is confused as to whether “Obama is more like Ronald Reagan (an ideological, transformative politician) or Bill Clinton ( a poll-driven pragmatist).” As I mentioned in the past: [Obama] hopes to let voters define what “hope” and “change” mean to them and then […]

Of all the “ex-generals” floating around out there, perhaps the most odious is Wesley Clark. Today he decided it was his place to demean John McCain’s military service on Face the Nation: Gen. Wesley Clark, acting as a surrogate for Barack Obama’s campaign, invoked John McCain’s military service against him in one of the more […]

The NY Times, unsurprisingly, is aghast at the Supreme Court’s ruling on Heller. Some excerpts: In a radical break from 70 years of Supreme Court precedent, Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, declared that the Second Amendment guarantees individuals the right to bear arms for nonmilitary uses, even though the amendment clearly links the […]

This wouldn’t heat up the surrounding ocean or anything would it? Recent massive volcanoes have risen from the ocean floor deep under the Arctic ice cap, spewing plumes of fragmented magma into the sea, scientists who filmed the aftermath reported Wednesday. The eruptions — as big as the one that buried Pompei — took place […]

The claim: At 46 seconds in, “That’s why I passed laws … [which] extended health care to wounded troops who’ve been neglected” (a citation at the bottom of the screen which reads “Public Law 110 – 181. PL 110-181 came out of HR 4986 – the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2008).” The […]

States starving for tax revenues may watch this particular gambit by New York state very carefully: Living up to its distinction as one of the most heavily taxed states in the nation, the Empire State has found a new way to subject its citizens to even more taxes. New York tax officials are looking to […]

The Democrats have answered the “drill here, drill now” crowd by saying that 80+% of the leases presently owned by oil companies are non-producing. As usual, their answer is clueless legislation – they would, by law, compel the oil and natural gas companies to produce from the federal lands they’re presently leasing before talking about […]

Do your remember the Nataline Sarkisyan story? The young woman needed a liver transplant which, if all went well, would extend her life by six months. UCLA doctors put her on a list for a liver transplant Dec. 6 and a liver became available four days later, the family said. Her doctors told Cigna in […]

It may loom large in this election. As it now stands, Obama is staunchly in the “we won’t drill” camp. “Opening our coastlines to offshore drilling would take at least a decade to produce any oil at all, and the effect on gasoline prices would be negligible at best since America only has 3 percent […]

So where are we in the discussion about using present energy sources (oil) while we get our ducks in a row concerning replacement alternative (and renewable) fuels? In a word: nowhere. It should come as no surprise to anyone, that like Social Security and Medicare, politicians on both sides of the isle have ignored the […]

First we have “hate speech” taking precedence over free speech. And now we have at least one court deciding that it has the right to overrule a father’s discipline: An appeal will be filed in a Montreal court after a Quebec judge overruled a father who grounded his 12-year-old daughter for dangerous Internet use. The […]

Barack Obama, while doing a fundraiser in 2007 claimed, “I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution…” Yet this constitutional law professor establishes the following as his criteria for selecting judges: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to […]

In an op-ed found in the Toronto Star, Haroon Siddiqui defends Canada’s hate-speech laws by declaring “Free Speech Cannot be an Excuse For Hate“. Of course free speech isn’t an excuse for hate. Nor is free speech an apologist for hate. And free speech certainly doesn’t condone hate. However, it does not and must not […]

Dina Cappiello, writing for AP, has an article out entitled “Companies Get OK to Annoy Polar Bears.” Anyone, what “companies” do you supposed Cappiello is writing about? Good guess – yes, oil companies. The lede: Less than a month after declaring polar bears a threatened species because of global warming, the Bush administration is giving […]

Billed as a “centerist agenda”, Chris Bowers of Open Left lists the “legislation that is certain to pass if Obama wins the White House, we pick up 20 more seats in the House, and 8 more seats in the Senate.” 1. H.R. 1591, U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act, […]

William Yeatman, an energy policy analyst for the Competitive Enterprise Institute asks: “How long can America, on the one hand, say, ‘We’re sick and tried of high gasoline prices,’ and on the other hand say, ‘We’re not going to do anything about it; we’re not going to tap our own resources?’” Yeatman said. “We’re going […]

SOFA stands for “Status of Forces Agreement” and we have 80 existing SOFA agreements currently with other nations where US troops are stationed. Iraq, of course, is under the microscope and naturally anything coming out of there that might reflect negatively gets a little air time. That’s not to say that the agreement and the […]

CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo lays out the Obama plan for your money if he’s elected president: “He’s going to take the capital gains tax at 15 percent right now all the way up to 25 to 28 percent. . . . Sell anything, like a home or stocks, and make a profit . . . [almost] […]

Paul Krugman resorts to some rather specious history in an attempt to lay racism at the feet of the right. Krugman today notes that some feel the election of Barack Obama to the presidency would transform America. Not so, says Krugman. Instead there’s something else at work: Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 […]

In 1972, the US imported 12% of its oil needs. Now we’re near the 50+% range. In those intervening thirty-something years, we, as a nation have done very little to address that problem. R.J. Samuelson, addressing the proposed cap and trade program, provides a litany of why it is a bad idea. A cap and […]

Just when you think Congressional Dems can’t get any loonier (Maxine Waters and nationalizing oil), they kick it up a notch. From the guy who yesterday was featured essentially saying, “hey, we lied, but you were dumb enough to buy into it“, PA’s own Paul Kanjorsk, we get this little beauty. From the Tax Policy […]

A little reminder: “A Veteran – whether active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reservist….is someone who, at one point in his or her life, wrote a check payable to “The United States of America” for an amount of “up to and including my life”. – Author Unknown ________ Cross-posted at QandO.

Three political goals – less pollution, less dependence of foreign oil, develop incentives for alternative fuels. Today’s Reality – gas prices are sharply up. Probable Result – less miles driven, thus less pollution, less dependence on foreign oil and more of an incentive to develop alternative fuels. More citizens using mass transit. Today’s election year […]

A couple of years ago, I started a series of posts I called “Project Hero” over at QandO to honor some of the heroes who I thought weren’t getting the mainstream recognition they deserved in the media. It has been a labor of love and an honor to do. Some of the stories are mindboggling […]

Chris Wallace and Barack Obama sat down today for an interview. The transcript is here. Mixed reviews from the leftosphere. Some liked it, some weren’t at all impressed. Most recognized that Obama was taking the opportunity of an interview on a network considered to be right leaning to distance himself from the far left. He […]

And still as radical a lefty as you’ll ever find. A few snippets from Bill Ayres blog: I’m sometimes asked if I regret anything I did to oppose the war in Viet Nam, and I say “no, I don’t regret anything I did to try to stop the slaughter of millions of human beings by […]