Author: McQ

The more I hear from this crowd the more I come to believe they live in cloud cuckoo land: Top White House adviser David Axelrod on Monday said that President Obama’s trips to Europe, Turkey and Latin America in the last three weeks have made anti-American sentiment uncool and “created a new receptivity” to U.S. […]

Well, here’s one decision the Obama administration can be glad they made – boycotting this mess: As Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for the eradication of Israel in his address to the United Nations anti-racism conference which opened it week long event in Geneva on Monday, delegates walked out, hecklers wearing clown-wigs shouted ‘racist’ towards […]

A level of economic government intrusion is now being contemplated like none we’ve ever seen before. If you didn’t understand the one of the main purposes of the tea parties, perhaps this will help. But what Obama rarely says about ending the “cycle of bubble and bust” is this: he’s prepared to intervene to make […]

Well here we go – the government apparently plans on getting further into a business in which it has no track record of success. Yes friends, if “Amtrak” doesn’t remind you of why this isn’t a good idea, how about doubling down on it? You remember Amtrak: In FY 2007, Amtrak earned approximately $2.15 billion […]

For those of you who believe that you can spend yourself out of debt and enjoy the same level of taxation, a little dose of economic cold water is in order, appropriately on the day after tax day. Many economists, including some who voted for Obama, do not believe that he can indefinitely avoid imposing […]

DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano reacts to the uproar over the, and I use the phrase very loosely when referring to it, “analysis and intelligence” report released by her department on “rightwing extremists”: The primary mission of this department is to prevent terrorist attacks on our nation. The document on right-wing extremism sent last week by […]

Much of the left, Steve Benen serving as a perfect example, are missing an essential point about the tea parties planned around the country. They aren’t about the level of taxation now. Instead, those attending them understand that with the massive spending undertaken by the federal government and the massive amounts of currency pumped into […]

After skillfully managing the bailout of GM and throwing billions of dollars in taxpayer money at it, our man Timmy (Geithner) has told GM to prepare for bankruptcy: General Motors Corp. is believed to be preparing to file for bankruptcy by June 1 after being directed to plan for a filing by the U.S. Treasury […]

Some form of strange aquatic life, not native to the coast of Somalia, helped Captain Richard Phillips escape his pirate captives. He’s now safe aboard the USS Bainbridge. The pirates? Not so good: The American captain of a cargo ship held hostage by pirates jumped overboard from the lifeboat where he was being held, and […]

I‘ve pretty much avoided mention of the bowing incident – it’s a distraction from the more serious things going on. But then the White House says we shouldn’t believe what we saw and throws out a couple of the most ridiculous reasons for what the President did that I’ve heard (an “unnamed” White House source […]

This should disturb a good number of you – it certainly did me. It shows you how effective the indoctrination of our youth has been. Don’t forget the radical students of 1969 are the tenured professors of ’09. It also demonstrates something else just as disturbing that I’ll get too at the end of the […]

Now that the dust is beginning to settle, what, really, was accomplished in what Anne Applebaum likens more to a sold out concert tour than a diplomatic tour-de-force. Well in the latter category it was more of a diplomatic tour-de-farce. The Obama administration had two goals in two important meetings on the continent. The first […]

No surprise to some, but a complete surprise to others I’m sure: The Obama administration is again invoking government secrecy in defending the Bush administration’s wiretapping program, this time against a lawsuit by AT&T customers who claim federal agents illegally intercepted their phone calls and gained access to their records. Disclosure of information sought by […]

Another day, another breathless “Antarctica is melting” report: An ice bridge linking a shelf of ice the size of Jamaica to two islands in Antarctica has snapped. Scientists say the collapse could mean the Wilkins Ice Shelf is on the brink of breaking away, and provides further evidence of rapid change in the region. Sited […]

Some relatively good news and some bad news. The good news has to do with “cap-and-tax” as the WSJ article cited refers to “cap-and-trade”: Tennessee Republican Lamar Alexander called it “the biggest vote of the year” so far, and he’s right. This means Majority Leader Harry Reid can’t jam cap and tax through as part […]

A couple of paragraphs from a story about Obama and Russia’s Medvedev which seem pretty telling to me: Russia’s Dmitry Medvedev hailed Barack Obama as “my new comrade” Thursday after their first face-to-face talks, saying the US president “can listen” — even if little progress was made on substance. The Russian president contrasted Obama as […]

A number of economists, including Paul Krugman, have panned Timothy Geithner’s plan to recapitalize banks by buying toxic assets in a complex and highly leveraged way that puts the taxpayer’s dollars at risk. Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel economist, has piled on. In fact, his is probably the most damning opinion I’ve seen. Stiglitz says that […]

Senator Tom Coburn’s office provides a few facts about the budget the Obama administration has submitted to Congress. Budget buster would most likely be a better description: Total Spending: Total spending under this budget is $3.9 trillion in 2009, or 28% of GDP, the highest level as a share of GDP since World War II. […]

A study just completed in Spain finds that the creation of so-called “green jobs” doesn’t at all seem to be the employment panacea promised by their advocates. As you recall, President Obama pointed to Spain as the reference point for the establishment of government aid to renewable energy. As the study points out, “No other […]

I‘m still in rather stunned disbelief about the White House ousting GM’s CEO. It’s not about how good a CEO he was or whether I agreed with his plan, his leadership style or his results. It’s about the White House going so far as to ask him to step aside. And, according to Obama’s own […]

I continue to be amazed that seemingly smart people are just suddenly figuring this out. “Blinders” doesn’t begin to describe what it must have taken to ignore Obama’s lack of experience and to hope the fact that he’d never displayed a scintilla of leadership in anything he’d ever done would somehow rectify itself prior to […]

And yes, it’s another Republican: Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, may be a skinny guy with a high voice. But he’s angrily setting out to tackle the biggest powers in college football, vowing to pound them until they reform the Bowl Championship Series. He called them out Wednesday, as he and Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wisc. — […]

Don’t buy or own any property in Mississippi, at least not while Republican Governor Haley Barbour is in the Governor’s mansion: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour says he’s vetoing a bill that would limit the use of eminent domain because it would hurt the state’s ability to lure economic development projects. The bill would’ve prevented the […]

If you ever had to put a picture next to the term “unprincipled political hack”, I think Arlen Specter’s would be a good choice. Read the following carefully. It’s not that Specter is against the union card check legislation itself (i.e. on “principle” he apparently accepts the premise that the right of a secret ballot […]

The Geithner Plan for “Bad Bank Assets” has been published in the WSJ under Geithner’s name. It is pretty much that which was leaked and critiqued by Dale here. James Joyner wonders: To my non-economist mind, that sounds eerily remniscient of the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), the $700 billion plan passed last October to […]

Barack Obama accepted an invitation to be on the Jay Leno show for a number of reasons. One was to show he was hip, cool and could be funny. He apparently felt the timing was right for another charm offensive. Secondly, he wanted to go where no sitting president had ever gone – a late […]

This parallel world that exists only within the DC beltway and where the laws of economics don’t apply has got to be merged again with the real world we all live in as soon as possible: Despite new estimates that say President Barack Obama’s budget would generate unsustainable large deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a […]

Our congratulations go out to the Obama administration on their latest foreign policy and trade triumph. Last week, apparently without consultation, they did away with a NAFTA pilot program which allowed Mexican trucks to deliver goods to certain areas of the US. Mexico has responded: Mexico has released the list of U.S. products that will […]

I know this will come as a complete surprise, but some Democrats have been lying to you. But before we get to that, let’s review. AIG was deemed dangerously insolvent a few months ago, so insolvent that it required the government to step in and save it. It was one of the “too big to […]

Once a community organizer, always a community organizer, I suppose – from an email I received recently from the Obama campaign email list: The current debate in Washington over President Obama’s budget has made one thing clear — ensuring our long-term prosperity won’t come without a fight. Partisan voices and special interests are showing real […]