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Mark Steyn uses incendiary sarcasm to incite liberals.
Actually, there is a lot of incendiary hate out there — here, for example. The voiceover is by U.S. citizen (and spiritual mentor, most recently, to Major Hasan) Ayman al-Awlaki. He is explaining the rationale for killing identified individuals, including the creators of South Park.
Mr. al-Awlaki says things like, “Harming Allah and his messenger is a reason to encourage Muslims to kill whoever does that.”
Maybe he’d get a worse press if he were to stop pussyfooting around and explicitly incite violence by saying something openly hateful like “I’m becoming very concerned about federal spending.”
David Harsanyi takes a positive view of Americans’ skepticism.
…News of the Pew poll triggered much hand-wringing from enlightened scribblers, unable to comprehend how the “paranoid” electorate wasn’t appropriately enchanted by the Department of Commerce. But as Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill put it, “Distrust of government is an all-American activity. It’s something we do as Americans and there’s nothing wrong with it.”
Indeed. Actually, with another ideological perspective, you could easily see the Pew poll as positively uplifting. The survey, after all, finds that Americans have an increasingly healthy attitude, embracing limited government over an “activist government” which, according to a majority, “has gone too far in regulating business and interfering with the free enterprise system.”
So an alternative national headline for the “trust” story might have read: “More and more, citizens turn to free enterprise over regulation.” …
Bill Clinton has stirred up a hornet’s nest. In Volokh Conspiracy, Kenneth Anderson reviews events at Waco.
Bill Clinton’s invocation of Timothy McVeigh in connection with the Tea Party movement caused me to recall my review of a book on the Waco massacre that was a motivation for McVeigh. The book under review was (by) Reavis, The Ashes of Waco, and it appeared in the Times Literary Supplement in 1995. Re-reading it for the first time in many years, I was struck by this section…
…The plan Reno approved and took to President Clinton for approval contemplated the children choking in the gas unprotected for forty-eight hours if necessary, to produce the requisite “maternal feelings”. By taking aim at the children with potentially lethal gas, their mothers would be compelled, according to the FBI plan repeatedly defended by the Clinton administration afterwards as “rational” planning, to flee with them into the arms of those trying to gas them. [Emphasis added.]
…I was shocked to read in Stone’s report that the Justice Department had undertaken, and had defended in the press as such, activities which if conducted in wartime would constitute war crimes. Because exposing the children to CS gas was the point of the FBI exercise: no children exposed, no pressure.
Ilya Somin says that Timothy McVeigh can’t be called a libertarian.
…you might think that Timothy McVeigh and friends were libertarian foes of big government who hoped that their terrorist attacks would somehow lead to tighter constraints on government power.
Nothing, however, could be further from the truth. In reality, McVeigh was a neo-Nazi and his attack was inspired by the Turner Diaries, a 1978 tract that advocated the use of terrorism to overthrow the US and establish a government explicitly based on Nazi Germany. If you suffer through the experience of actually reading The Turner Diaries, as I did, you will find that author William Pierce did not support anything remotely resembling limited government; indeed, he explicitly repudiated limited government conservatism in the book. …
…The bottom line is that Clinton and others have drawn an unwarranted connection between “anti-government” movements that seek to limit government spending and regulation and a very different set of groups that have no real objection to big government as such. Instead, they seek to use massive state power to enforce racism, anti-Semitism, and neo-Nazi totalitarianism. No one should confuse that with a genuine anti-government ideology motivated by concerns about the fate of “American freedom.” …
Tony Blankley has seen Clinton’s tactic before.
…By chance, I was on CNN’s “Situation Room” on Friday to comment on Mr. Clinton’s latest attempt to smear anti-tax, anti-big-government grass-roots efforts. Unlike in 1995, now I had the advantage of being familiar with subsequent statements by Clinton aides and others. So, on the show, I quoted from Mr. Clinton’s chief speechwriter in a 2000 interview on PBS’ “Frontline.”
Michael Waldman said, describing Mr. Clinton’s words immediately after the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, that “he also very skillfully used the moment to begin the process of making people wonder about the Republican revolution on Capitol Hill. … And very subtly and appropriately, by planting the national flag in opposition to that (GOP rhetoric and the McVeigh bombing) began to turn the political tide as well.”
…I quoted from a 2001 Associated Press article about McVeigh’s execution, which included his own words: “The siege at Waco (ineptly carried out by Mr. Clinton’s Justice Department) was the defining event in his (McVeigh’s) decision to retaliate against the government with the bombing. … ‘If there would not have been a Waco, I would have put down roots somewhere and not been so unsettled with the fact that my government was a threat to me. Everything that Waco implies was on the forefront of my thoughts. That sort of guided my path for the next couple of years.’ ” Ouch. …
Roger Simon looks at some interesting poll numbers.
…According to a poll published this week by McClaughlin & Associates, 46 percent of Jewish voters would prefer someone else than Obama in the presidency, compared to 42 percent who would re-elect him. That’s only a meagre four percent separation, but that number is stunning considering Obama got 78 percent of the Jewish vote in November. That’s a difference of 32 percent between now and then. Has there been another voting block with that large a swing? There may have been, but I doubt it. Something is clearly going on here. …
But in the Washington Examiner, Michael Barone found that the votes went the other way.
Democrat Ted Deutch has won the Florida 19th district special election over Republican Edward Lynch, apparently by a 62%-35% margin. …
…This is one of the most heavily Jewish congressional districts in the nation, and Deutch’s performance suggests that Barack Obama’s harsh criticism of the Israeli government has not hurt Democratic candidates among Jewish voters. Similarly, in the Massachusetts special Senate election January 19, I found that the Democratic percentages held up pretty well in the most heavily Jewish towns (Brookline, Newton, Sharon). …
In the Huffington Post, Sam Stein reports on the latest Republican strategizing on the Finance Reform bill.
Nine months after he penned a memo laying out the arguments for health care legislation’s destruction, Republican message guru Frank Luntz has put together a playbook to help derail financial regulatory reform.
In a 17-page memo titled, “The Language of Financial Reform,” Luntz urged opponents of reform to frame the final product as filled with bank bailouts, lobbyist loopholes, and additional layers of complicated government bureaucracy.
“If there is one thing we can all agree on, it’s that the bad decisions and harmful policies by Washington bureaucrats that in many ways led to the economic crash must never be repeated,” Luntz wrote. “This is your critical advantage. Washington’s incompetence is the common ground on which you can build support.”…
From the White House Blog, Deputy Communications Director Jen Psaki gives the administration’s line.
…One false criticism we’re hearing is this: that the Senate bill will allow endless taxpayer-funded bailouts of financial firms. What they won’t tell you is that they are taking their marching orders from a partisan political consultant who has told them that the best way to oppose real reform is to link it to the bank bailouts. In fact, the polling memo they’re working from explicitly states that “the best way to kill any legislation is to link it to the Big Bank Bailout.” No matter what the bill actually does, they’re going to call it a bailout because that’s what the polls tell them to do. …
In the Corner, Robert Costa posts Frank Luntz’s response to the White House spin.
… When we presented dial session participants the Financial Reform legislation as it was written in the House, they reacted most negatively to the bailout provisions contained within the bill. This shouldn’t be surprising. In the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other major financial publications — as well as from some of this country’s leading economic experts — they too have highlighted the bailout provisions and called the legislation a “gift to big banks.”
…Unfortunately, the leaders of this Congress are hell-bent on pushing through legislation without reasonable public information, and that has to stop. Too many mistakes are made when important legislation is rushed. Even President Obama, who first denied there was a bailout, is now asking that the $50 billion bailout administrative fund be eliminated from the Senate bill.
Why eliminate a bailout fund if it didn’t exist? Because the legislative process was slowed, people got a chance to read it, review it and comment on it. Better to do it right than do it fast. …
Also on the Corner, Daniel Foster comments.
You’ll be surprised to hear that the Dodd bill apparently has a loophole or two in it. But don’t worry, one anonymous lobbyist told HuffPo what you’ll need to do to get your financial firm into one of your own:
“Obtaining a carve-out isn’t rocket science,” said a Republican financial services lobbyist. “Just give Chairman Dodd [D-Conn.] and Chuck Schumer [D-N.Y.] a s***load of money.”
Ah, markets at work: Wall Street has a s***load of money and needs loopholes, Washington has a s***load of loopholes and needs money.
Michio Kaku, in the WSJ, gives possible scenarios for the Iceland volcano. Check out the amazing photos that came from The Boston Globe.
…The worse case scenario, which is unlikely, involves this eruption triggering another, larger eruption. There are 35 active volcanoes in Iceland, and one eruption has been known to set off another. The worse case happened in 1783, with an eruption lasting eight months. That eruption killed off much of the livestock and agriculture in Iceland, which in turn caused the death of about 25% of the island’s population.
The eruption also eventually killed tens of thousands of people on the Continent. Benjamin Franklin was in Paris at the time and was one of the first to connect the rapid change in local weather that collapsed European agriculture with a volcanic explosion. 1783 became known as the horrible “year without summer.” Europe plunged into a period of poverty that lasted for years. Some historians believe that this may have contributed to the French Revolution of 1789. …
Christopher Hitchens paints a portrait of Icelandic culture.
…Until very recently, you had your elemental choice between lamb and cod if you were an Icelander—the near-tundra of the interior (where the Apollo mission trained in the world’s closest approximation to a moonscape) has a few swaths of grass for hardy sheep. The same simplicity on the seashore: “Fish or Die” was the motto until the big shoals began to run out. Such was Iceland’s work ethic that on contact with the European Union, it soon became a dynamo of startups and finance, winning international plaudits until the implosion of its banking system very nearly ripped through the euro two years ago and forced Britain to seize Icelandic assets using anti-terrorist legislation. If Iceland were a mouse, it could be said to have roared, and more than once. …
In Yahoo News, Carlo Piovano discusses the worst-case scenario.
…Scientists fear tremors at the Eyjafjallajokull (ay-yah-FYAH-lah-yer-kuhl) volcano could trigger an even more dangerous eruption at the nearby Katla volcano — creating a worst-case scenario for the airline industry and travelers around the globe.
A Katla eruption would be 10 times stronger and shoot higher and larger plumes of ash into the air than its smaller neighbor, which has already brought European air travel to a standstill for five days and promises severe travel delays for days more. …
Also in Yahoo News, Andrea Thompson writes about the phenomenon behind the dramatic lightning in the volcanic clouds.
…Scientists don’t know exactly how lightning is created in an ash cloud, however. But they expect it’s a result of particles rubbing together, generating friction and electrical charges.
The volcano lightning may be generated in a similar way to that in normal thunderstorms in a process scientists have dubbed “dirty thunderstorms.” In a normal thunderstorm, ice particles rub together to generate an electrical charge; in the case of a volcano, rock fragments, ash and ice may all rub together to produce this charge. …
In the Corner, Michael Rubin passes along some Icelandic humor.
…Iceland goes bankrupt, then it manages to set itself on fire. This has insurance scam written all over it.