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Americans have much to be proud of today. The election of an African-American to the highest office in the land is an outstanding achievement. It is a testament to the open-minded tolerance of the American people; at least the majority of them.
Do you think the press and the rest of the world will stop telling us how racist we are? Maybe now they’ll notice that the American people had already moved on.
Nineteen years ago Virginia elected the first black governor in the country Then, Pickerhead was proud to vote for the Democrat Doug Wilder over the hapless Marshall Coleman. This time however, it is discouraging to see a doctrinaire leftist selected by the voters. Nothing but trouble follows in the wake of officials who use the state’s power to compel and direct behavior.
And, this is second time the Dems have given us a president who throws a baseball like a girl. What’s with that?
Many of our favorite blogs have election posts. Jonah Goldberg starts us off with a Corner post.
Look, I expect to be one of the most severe critics of the Obama administration and the Democrats generally in the years ahead (though I sincerely hope I won’t find that necessary). But Obama ran a brilliant race and he should be congratulated for it. Moreover, during the debate over the financial crisis, Obama said that a president should be able to do more than one thing at a time. Well, I think we members of the loyal opposition should be able to make distinctions simultaneously. It is a wonderful thing to have the first African-American president. It is a wonderful thing that in a country where feelings are so intense that power can be transferred so peacefully. …
Lots more from the Corner, Contentions, and the Weekly Standard Blog.
Thomas Sowell reminds us we actually do have a sound economy.
… Official data show that the output of the economy in the most recent quarter is down– by less than one-half of one percent– but at last the media have one of those two quarters required to qualify as a recession.
Whether they will get the other quarter that they need, in order to start using the word “recession” legitimately, is another story. In fact, the data-gathering process is by no means so precise that we can expect the one-half of one percent decline to hold up, since such statistics often get revised later.
It is not just a question of being able to put scare headlines on newspapers or alarmist rhetoric on television. Such things are just the prelude to massive political “change” in fundamentally sound institutions that have for more than two centuries made the American economy the envy of most of the world.
If the left succeeds, it will be like amputating your arm because of a stomach ache. …
John Stossel, using a quote from Walter Williams builds a column around who will “run the country.”
… “Politicians have immense power to do harm to the economy. But they have very little power to do good,” Williams says.
The failure to understand this is at the root of many of our problems.
“Most of life is outside the government sector,” says David Boaz of the Cato Institute. “Most change in America doesn’t come from politicians. It comes from people inventing things and creating. The telephone, the telegraph, the computer, all those things didn’t come from government. Our world is going to get better and better, as long as we keep the politicians from screwing it up.”
It’s easy to find examples of government screwing up what it should have left alone. …
David Harsanyi says we need a principled opposition.
… Barack Obama is now my president. Though I wonder if irascible Democrats who rode around with those snazzy bumper stickers reading “He’s not my president” for the past eight years realize the irony of their call for national harmony.
Let’s hope there’s none.
Winning elections is one thing; governing is quite another. It is impossible to deny that Obama ran one of sharpest, most diligent and exhilarating campaigns in modern American history or, for that matter, that the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has won a resounding mandate to run the country.
That only means we need a robust and principled opposition.
My children are continually lectured by well-meaning adults about the mystifying power culled from our differences, the strength we derive from our disparate upbringing and the power of diversity.
So why, one wonders, does this belief not extend to our politics and ideology? Why do we strive to shed individuality and become herds of devotees and shills? …
Robert Samuelson says good luck on the “tax the rich gig.”
… But the redistributionist argument is at best a half-truth. The larger truth is that much of the income of the rich and well-to-do comes from what they do. If they stop doing it, then the income and wealth vanish. No one gets it. It can’t be redistributed because it doesn’t exist. Everyone’s poorer.
This isn’t just theory. Last week, New York Gov. David Paterson pleaded with Congress to provide emergency aid to states. Heavily dependent on Wall Street for taxes, he testified, New York faces a $12.5 billion budget deficit next year and expects joblessness to rise by 160,000. Wall Street bonuses will drop by 43 percent and capital gains income by 35 percent, he estimated. People in New York would be better off if the securities industry were still booming, even if there were more economic inequality.
Americans legitimately resent Wall Street types who profited from dubious investment strategies that aggravated today’s crisis. And government properly redistributes income to reduce hardship and poverty. But that’s different from attempting to deduce and engineer some optimal distribution of income. Government can’t do that and shouldn’t try. Scapegoating and punishing all of the rich won’t do us any good if the resulting taxes dull investment and risk-taking, discouraging economic growth that benefits everyone.
Politico’s Roger Simon takes a dim view of McCain’s campaign.
As his campaign rattles to an end, John McCain has never been better on the stump. Not a natural orator, McCain finally has found his voice.
“Stand up! Stand up! Stand up and fight!” McCain thundered Monday in Blountville, Tenn. “We never give up! We never quit! We never hide from history; we make history!”
And he will make history Tuesday night. He will enter the history books either as having pulled off one of the greatest upsets in modern political history or for having run one of its worst campaigns.
As of now, he appears to be heading for the latter. Let’s take a look just at some recent examples.
How about that Dick Cheney endorsement Saturday? Wasn’t that a brilliant move with just three days to go in the race? …
The Onion says a black man has been put into the world’s worst job.