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The election of Scott Brown was the most important event of the last year, and it came out of the blue. Today’s Pickings starts out with a retrospective of our items on that Massachusetts race. The first mention was January 6th when John Fund had an piece in Political Diary, joined by John Steele Gordon with an item in Contentions. It was such a long shot, we almost failed to pass them on thinking there was no sense creating false hopes. It’s fun to look back at these posts and watch things develop. Today we went without the normal pull quotes. We just did our introductions and then the complete posts are after the summary.
Afterwards there are some current items and a great day of cartoons.
January 6th …
John Fund focuses our attention on the Senate race that could, if we are very lucky, be the undoing of Obamacare.
Comments on the same race from John Steele Gordon in Contentions.
January 10th …
We opened with a piece by Mark Steyn about America in decline. Then posted this;
Maybe the country will decline the decline. New poll shows the Mass. US senate race a toss up. We shall see if voters in Massachusetts are going to send a thunderbolt to the White House. Corner post by Daniel Foster with the details.
January 11th …
Scott Rasmussen analyzes the Massachusetts race.
January 12th …
Michael Barone looks at the polls in Massachusetts.
John Fund posts on that race.
Corner post too.
January 13th …
Scott Brown, running for the senate in MA is fast on his feet. The Corner has the story.
January 14th …
Politico gives us another view of the Mass. senate race by looking at the Dem candidate, Martha Coakley.
January 17th …
Jennifer Rubin blogs about Martha Coakley and Tuesday’s vote in Mass.
January 18th …
Power Line posts on dueling rallies in Mass.
Jake Tapper has another report on the Mass. race.
January 19th …
Mark Steyn posts on the Mass. race.
Back to the present day, there was a state of the union speech last night. Here’s a Corner reaction from Marc Thiessen who led two state of the union writing teams.
… It was quite possibly the most partisan, condescending State of the Union address ever. Tonight, Obama was unpresidential. The permanent campaign continues. In the long run it will backfire.
Marty Peretz notices a stunning Obama omission. Seems the One, while listing the Haiti helping countries overlooked the extraordinary Israeli 500 bed hospital contribution David Warren wrote about in January 26th Pickings.
I’ve just read the transcript of the president’s remarks about Haiti, the ones he made on January 15. He noted that, in addition to assistance from the United States, significant aid had also come from “Brazil, Mexico, Canada, France, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic, among others.” Am I missing another country that truly weighed in with truly consequential assistance? Ah, yes. There it is. Right there “among others.” Yes, the country to which I refer is “among others,” that one.
The fact is that, next to our country, Israel sent the largest contingent of trained rescue workers, doctors, and other medical personnel. The Israeli field hospital was the only one on the ground that could perform real surgery, which it did literally hundreds of times, while delivering–as of last week–at least 16 babies, including one premature infant and three caesarians. The first 250-odd Israelis were real professionals, and they were supplemented by others, also professionals. And to these can be added the many organized Jews from the Diaspora who, in solidarity with Israel, also went on a work pilgrimage, an aliyah, in solidarity with Haiti. …
According to Beltway Confidential in Washington Examiner Obama is now saying he had no part in any of the slimy deals for ObamaCare.
… But the Washington Post reported on December 20 that Obama’s top aides were involved in the negotiations with Nelson:
“Schumer, who spent more than 13 hours in Reid’s office Friday, said the Medicaid issue was settled around lunchtime, and the final eight hours of the talks focused on the abortion language. Boxer estimated she spent seven hours in Reid’s offices — without ever once sitting in the same room, even though they were all of 25 steps apart.
Reid and Schumer kept up the “shuttle negotiation” between the leader’s conference room and his top aide’s office, Boxer said. Keenly aware how tense the talks were, the White House dispatched two aides who together have decades of experience in the Senate — Jim Messina and Peter Rouse — to work with Nelson. They relayed their intelligence to White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, who monitored the talks from a dinner in Georgetown.” …
The Corner provides Krauthammer’s Take on the spending freeze.
It’s not a hatchet. It’s not a scalpel. It’s a Q-tip. It’s a fraud. This is a miniscule amount. It excludes Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs. It excludes all the entitlements, which are 60 percent of the budget. It excludes stimuli past and future — the two thirds of the near trillion-dollar stimulus that has not been spent. All of that is excluded.
The Anchoress has a post that explores some of the increasing strangeness of Obama.
Necessity being the mother of invention, it appears that Barack Obama has needed, and thus invented, the Portable President Kit, consisting of two teleprompters with accompanying equipment and a traveling Don’t-You-Know-Who-I-Am-I-Am-The-President-That’s-Who Podium With Presidential Seal, which Barack Obama takes with him, everywhere he goes.
That means he brings it to an elementary school, for use in addressing the press (something past-and-moronic presidents did not have to do), who are then weirdly dismissed and unable to witness his talk to the children. …