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Mark Steyn welcomes the ‘brokest generation.’
… I had the pleasure of talking to the students of Hillsdale College last week, and I endeavored to explain what it is they’re being lined up for in a 21st century America of more government, more regulation, less opportunity and less prosperity: When you come to take your seat at the American table (to use another phrase politicians are fond of), you’ll find the geezers, boomers and X-ers have all gone to the men’s room, and you’re the only one sitting there when the waiter presents the check. That’s you: Generation Checks.
The Teleprompter Kid says not to worry: His budget numbers are based on projections that the economy will decline 1.2 percent this year and then grow 4 percent every year thereafter. Do you believe that? In fact, does he believe that? This is the guy who keeps telling us this is the worst economic crisis in 70 years, and it turns out it’s just a 1-percent decline for a couple more months, and then party time resumes? And, come to that, wasn’t there a (notably unprojected) 6.2 percent drop in GDP just in the last quarter of 2008?
Whatever. Growth may be lower than projected, but who’s to say all those new programs, agencies, entitlements and other boondoggles won’t also turn out to cost less than anticipated? Might as well be optimistic, right? …
Jan. 4th Pickings was introduced with these words; … Pickerhead has grown very tired of the media’s over use of “team of rivals” suggesting there is some prairie wisdom in Obama’s picks. Seems like we will have chaos instead, since our new president is a rather unformed immature 46 years old. Is there any guiding thought or idea that lies behind his quest, other than narcissism and change? We are likely to see a president who agrees with the person who last spoke to him. … Cafe Hayek posts on the present confusion in Washington with excerpts from Andy Grove of Intel and Howard Fineman of Newsweek. From Fineman;
… But, in ways both large and small, what’s left of the American establishment is taking his measure and, with surprising swiftness, they are finding him lacking.
They have some reasons to be concerned. I trace them to a central trait of the president’s character: he’s not really an in-your-face guy. By recent standards—and that includes Bill Clinton as well as George Bush—Obama for the most part is seeking to govern from the left, looking to solidify and rely on his own party more than woo Republicans. And yet he is by temperament judicious, even judicial. He’d have made a fine judge. But we don’t need a judge. We need a blunt-spoken coach.
Obama may be mistaking motion for progress, calling signals for a game plan. A busy, industrious overachiever, he likes to check off boxes on a long to-do list. A genial, amenable guy, he likes to appeal to every constituency, or at least not write off any. …
Pickings believes the adage that Jews are the “canaries in the coal mine” and that anti-Semitism is a leading indicator of problems in a society. The Charles Freeman nomination is more than the latest Obama personnel debacle. Freeman’s intemperate farewell on the Foreign Policy website make it plain we dodged a bullet when he withdrew. But he exposed the real problem, which is; how the hell did he get nominated? Wesley Pruden has some thoughts and then, as is her style, Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post goes into some detail about the Washington thinking exposed by this nomination. She doesn’t say it, but certainly believes, it is time for Israel to take things in their own hands, and destroy the Iranian nukes.
Wesley Pruden disposes of Charles Freeman.
… Mr. Freeman, to put a fine point on it, does not like the Israelis very much. … … Mr. Freeman doesn’t like anybody who makes trouble for China very much, either, particularly if they’re demonstrating for democracy at Tiananmen Square or Tibetans struggling to get their country back.
Fortunately, it occurred to a few key Republicans and several Democrats that he was a very odd choice for the job. The Republicans were mostly Christians, the Democrats were mostly Jewish, and it’s a shame this is important but Mr. Freeman’s friends on the left are trying to make this a religious issue. It’s time to blame the Jews again, this time for ruining poor Mr. Freeman’s new career as the chef in charge of cooking the intelligence served in the Oval Office. …
Caroline Glick with more background on l’affaire Freeman.
Ill winds are blowing out of Washington these days. On Thursday, The Washington Post headline blared, “Intelligence Pick Blames ‘Israel Lobby’ for Withdrawal.”
The article, by Walter Pincus, described how former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia Charles “Chas” Freeman is blaming Israel’s Jewish American supporters for his resignation Tuesday from his post as chairman of the National Intelligence Council.
In a diatribe published on Foreign Policy’s Web site on Wednesday, Freeman accused the alleged “Israel Lobby” of torpedoing his appointment. In his words, “The tactics of the Israel Lobby plumb the depths of dishonor and indecency… The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through the exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom of its views… and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by Americans and our government other than those that it favors.”
He continued, “I believe that the inability of the American public to discuss, or the government to consider, any option for US policies in the Middle East opposed by the ruling faction in Israeli politics has allowed that faction to adopt and sustain policies that ultimately threaten the existence of the State of Israel. It is not permitted for anyone in the United States to say so. This is not just a tragedy for Israelis and their neighbors in the Middle East; it is doing widening damage to the national security of the United States.”
The Washington Post’s article quoted liberally from Freeman’s diatribe. It also identified the Jewish Americans who wrote against Freeman’s appointment, and insinuated that AIPAC – which took no stand on his appointment – actually worked behind the scenes to undermine it.
While it described in lurid detail how one anti-Freeman Jewish blogger quoted other anti-Freeman Jewish bloggers on his Web site, Pincus’s article failed to report what it was about Freeman that caused the Jewish cabal to criticize his appointment. Consequently, by default, Pincus effectively endorsed Freeman’s diatribe against the all-powerful “Israel Lobby.” …
The GOP doesn’t want you to know who the biggest earmark pigs were. Slate’s Tim Noah has the story.
… No fewer than six out of these 10 senators are Republicans, including the two top earmark hogs, Cochran and Wicker. Cochran, Wicker, Bond, and Shelby at least had the decency to vote for the bill after they stuffed it with earmarks. Vitter and Grassley followed McConnell’s hypocritical lead, inserting earmarks but then voting against the final bill, knowing it would pass anyway. …
Charles Krauthammer ruminates on the stem cell signing ceremonies.
… That part of the ceremony, watched from the safe distance of my office, made me uneasy. The other part — the ostentatious issuance of a memorandum on “restoring scientific integrity to government decision-making” — would have made me walk out.
Restoring? The implication, of course, is that while Obama is guided solely by science, Bush was driven by dogma, ideology and politics.
What an outrage. Bush’s nationally televised stem cell speech was the most morally serious address on medical ethics ever given by an American president. It was so scrupulous in presenting the best case for both his view and the contrary view that until the last few minutes, the listener had no idea where Bush would come out.
Obama’s address was morally unserious in the extreme. It was populated, as his didactic discourses always are, with a forest of straw men. Such as his admonition that we must resist the “false choice between sound science and moral values.” Yet, exactly 2 minutes and 12 seconds later he went on to declare that he would never open the door to the “use of cloning for human reproduction.”
Does he not think that a cloned human would be of extraordinary scientific interest? And yet he banned it.
Is he so obtuse as not to see that he had just made a choice of ethics over science? Yet, unlike Bush, who painstakingly explained the balance of ethical and scientific goods he was trying to achieve, Obama did not even pretend to make the case why some practices are morally permissible and others not. …
David Harsanyi wants in on the stem cell debate too.
This week, President Barack Obama lifted the ban on federal funding for stem-cell research that destroys human embryos — and instantly one of most intellectually deceitful debates of the past decade was re-ignited.
The president claimed that from now on we would “make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.” Others dropped inane phrases regarding the “proper role of science” and the need to “remove politics from science,” as if science existed in a vacuum.
To begin with — though I disagree with the position — opposition to embryonic stem-cell research is not the equivalent of opposition to “science.” Opponents have an ethical position that concerns policy. They are not alone.
Many liberals oppose the expansion of nuclear energy or genetically modified foods, to offer just two examples. Why would they stand in the way of science? Well, I assume, they hold some principled reservations about the repercussions of those activities. …
WSJ editors comment on the success of the HBO original film ‘Taking Chance” which was reviewed in these pages in Pickings of March 1st. The schedule for the rest of the month is below.
It’s been widely observed that movies about the Iraq war have tended to bomb at the box office. One newspaper report speculated that films like “Home of the Brave” and “Stop-Loss” failed because “the audience might prefer a longer interval before viewing events as troubling as war.”
“Taking Chance” refutes this notion. When it debuted February 21 on HBO, it became the network’s most-watched original movie in five years, drawing two million viewers — especially impressive given that it aired on Saturday, traditionally not a big TV-watching night. An HBO spokesman estimates that another 5.5 million have watched subsequent airings of the film, and that doesn’t count DVR viewers. …
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