Monthly Archives: February 2017

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

Observations 2017 03 01

The WSJ noted that viewers watch YouTube videos one BILLION hours a day. It will soon eclipse the total hours spent watching television. Warren Buffett’s company now owns $18 billion worth of Apple. Not bad for a guy who shuns

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Governing Rhetoric

Trump’s bombastic rhetoric may have won the election against incredible odds, and this sort of energy may be needed to claw back the administrative state in a meaningful way, but governing requires a shift in style if not substance. His

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A Radicalized Bureaucracy

from The National Review, Matthew Continetti writes Who Rules The United States: The last few weeks have confirmed that there are two systems of government in the United States. The first is the system of government outlined in the U.S.

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Gaslighting the Press

from Kevin Williamson at The National Review, The Press vs. the President It is possible, if you are not mentally crippled, to hold your mind two non-exclusive ideas: Donald J. Trump stinks, and the press stinks. Trump’s spat with the

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Whitewashing History

From Ben Shapiro at National Review, We Can’t Erase History — Or Simplify It History is important only if we recognize that it isn’t some sort of Punch-and-Judy drama to be acted out with puppets in black hats and white. Most

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The Threat of Economic Nationalism

From National Review, Jonah Goldberg, Down with the Administrative State: Rich Lowry and I have been going back and forth on nationalism vs. patriotism quite a bit. I’m not going to revisit all of that because it’s already gotten way too

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Losing the Zero Sum Game

From The Federalist, Why The Resistance Is The Best Thing That’s Happened To Donald Trump by David Harsanyi That’s the choice #TheResistance — whose mantra, let’s face it, has synched with the national Democratic Party — has created for many moderate Republicans,

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One Sided Co-existence

from The Jerusalem Post, HOW A PRO-PALESTINIAN AMERICAN REPORTER CHANGED HIS VIEWS ON ISRAEL AND THE CONFLICT by Hunter Stuart.: During one such argument, one of my roommates ‒ an easygoing American-Jewish guy in his mid-30s ‒ seemed to be suggesting

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Uranium One

from Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal,  America’s Decadent Leadership Class: Think of how he’s experienced them the past few years. Readers of these pages know of the Uranium One deal in which a Canadian businessman got Bill Clinton to help

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The New Normal is the Same as the Old Normal

From Marc Levinson at The Wall Street Journal, Why the Economy Doesn’t Roar Anymore: Historically, boom times are the exception, not the norm. That isn’t true just in America. Over the past two centuries, per capita incomes in all advanced

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The Protectionist Fallacy

from National Review, Who Will Protect Americans from the Protectionists? by George Will The tiny print on the back of iPhones accurately says they are “assembled,” not manufactured, in China. The American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis notes that parts come

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The Left’s New Journey

Before the election there was a very small group who called for Texas to secede from the Union.  There was never any real chance of this proceeding but it made for amusing divisive stories in the press.  It fulfilled the

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In Search of Better Masters

From Daniel Greenfield at Sultan Knish, The Right to Be Better People: Free people fight for independence. But the left’s revolutions are struggles for tyranny. They protest for better masters. They violently agitate for rulers who will run their lives

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Overreach of Bureaucratic Power

from The National Review, Matthew Continetti writes Who Rules The United States: Here was a case of current and former national security officials using their position, their sources, and their methods to crush a political enemy. And no one but supporters

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Liberalism Abandoned

From Robert Zubrin at Richochet, America Needs a Liberal Party: America needs a new Liberal Party because both major parties have abandoned liberalism. Neither adequately supports international free trade or the defense of the West — the two pillars of

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Selective Rage

Megan McArdle at Bloomberg View writes Liberals Will Not Like How This Revenge Plot Ends Then Republicans announced that they simply weren’t going to hold a vote on Merrick Garland, the center-left judge that Obama nominated to replace him. They were well

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Magnifying Their Weaknesses

From The Washington Free Beacon, Matthew Continetti writes Trump Short Circuits Washington: Not only are there two Americas. There are two governments: one elected and one not, one that alternates between Republicans and Democrats and one that remains, decade after

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Liberty and Democracy

From George Will at National Review, Where Justice Scalia Went Wrong: There is no philosophizing in the Constitution — until the Founders’ philosophy is infused into it by construing the document as a charter of government for a nation that

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Cartoonish Hostility and Media Credibility

from Mollie Hemingway at The Federalist, 4 Recent Examples Show Why No One Trusts Media Coverage Of Trump If the media can’t be trusted to fairly report on successful governors, genius Yale professors, or Martin Luther King III, they can’t be

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An Illiberal Media

from Jonah Goldberg’s G-File at National Review I agree with pretty much all of the right-wing criticism of the mainstream media these days, or at least the intelligent stuff, of which there has been plenty. What the MSM still fails

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