Bridge Building

Sous les ponts de Barry - By Mark Steyn - The Corner - National Review Online: "But who knows? By 2018, there might be some 70/30 UN/federal bridge plan, under which the UN pays 70 per cent, and the feds pay 30, and thus the town would only be liable for 20 per cent of the state’s 40 per cent of the feds’ 30 percent. And the estimate for the bridge will be a mere $2.7 billion.

While the Select Board was pondering this, another bridge was condemned. The state’s estimate was $415,000, and, given that the previous bridge had been on the to-do list for six years, they weren’t ready to pencil this second one in on the schedule just yet. So instead the town put in a new bridge from a local contractor. Cost: $30,000. Don’t worry; it’s all up to code—and a lot safer than the worn-out temporary bridge still waiting for the 80/20/60/40/70/30 deal to kick in. As my friend said at the meeting:

’Screw the state. Let’s do it ourselves.’

I prefer that to “Let’s do it together.”

Contemporary American liberalism can’t build bridges. Its language is now so divorced from action that it thinks “bridge-building” is a term of outreach: Barack Obama is building bridges to the Muslim world, or the transgendered community or whatever. Big Government builds metaphorical bridges, and that’s it."

How's that O de bureaucracy worship working out for you pal?

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Send Him Back

I Wish to Register a Complaint: Of Obama and Dead Parrots - By Charles C. W. Cooke - The Corner - National Review Online: "In the parrot sketch, when Cleese asks the shopkeeper why the parrot is lying motionless on his back, he is told that “the Norwegian Blue prefers kippin’ on its back!” Look, Cleese replies, “I took the liberty of examining that parrot when I got it home, and I discovered the only reason that it had been sitting on its perch in the first place was that it had been nailed there.” Last night, even the president’s supporters could not spin away the weariness. The nails have come away.

It must be a crushing realization for his devotees, but the president’s plumage is no longer beautiful. He is, further to paraphrase our desperate shopkeeper, “tired and shagged out after a prolonged squawk.” A one-trick parrot, he is pining for the fjords of Chicago. It’s time to send him back there."

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Full Employment Through Unemployment

Today’s Jobs Numbers: The Silver Lining - By Peter Kirsanow - The Corner - National Review Online: "Instead, look at the bright side. If Americans continue to give up looking for work at a rate of 370,00 per month, the unemployment rate will likely fall below 6 percent by the end of a second Obama term. As Joe Scarborough proclaimed about today’s report, “This is good news for the president.”

Obama-Biden: Full employment through unemployment."

OMG.

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This Is Called Keynesian Economics...

Instapundit » Blog Archive » ANDREW KLAVAN: Obamanomics 101, Understanding How the Obama Economy Works. UPDATE: Reader V…: "ANDREW KLAVAN: Obamanomics 101, Understanding How the Obama Economy Works."

or Kenyan economics... Or banana republic economics... Or bankruptcy... Or something...

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Occupying The Occupiers

The PJ Tatler » Jason Mattera Occupies the DNC: Hey, Sign this Communist Petition on My iPad!: "Jason Mattera and I were partners in crime back in the day. This week he’s occupying the occupiers who are occupying the DNC. In this episode, Jason gets a communist sympathizer to sign a petition on his capitalist-created iPad, practically begs the occupiers to share their tents, and “overstimulates” some sick guy.

Whatever you do, don’t overstimulate occupiers. Apparently it’s like feeding a Mogwai after midnight or something."

Droll comedic perfection at the expense of Demo-commie dimwits. Watch and weep...

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The Won: Voted Off The Island

Page 4: Bob Woodward Book: Debt Deal Collapse Led to 'Pure Fury' From President Obama - ABC News: "But after the breakthrough agreement fell apart, Boehner's "Plan B" would ultimately exclude the president from most of the key negotiations. The president was "voted off the island," in Woodward's phrase, even by members of his own party, as congressional leaders patched together an eleventh hour framework to avoid default.

Frustration over the lack of clear White House planning was voiced to Obama's face at one point, with a Democratic congressional staffer taking the extraordinary step of confronting the president in the Oval Office.

With the nation facing the very real possibility of defaulting on its debt for the first time in its history, David Krone, the chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, told the president directly that he couldn't simply reject the only option left to Congress.

"It is really disheartening that you, that this White House did not have a Plan B," Krone said, according to Woodward."

RTWT.

Good God. What a mental midget. Go back and look at this to remind yourself who the people are that he has great confidence in his ability to persuade.

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Schiff In Charlotte: No Matter Where You Turn, There's Another Rocket Scientist!

Peter Schiff to Democrats: Who’s up for banning corporate profits? « Hot Air: "To cleanse the palate, a little fish-in-a-barrel fun with the regulars in Charlotte. His producer e-mails to stress that they deliberately avoided the tents outside the convention, where the radicals are camped out, so that they could get a more “mainstream” take. The result: Cluelessness leavened with a sprinkle of leftist dogma."

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Yes, What WILL Happen?

News Flash: Obama Approved Democratic Platform | Power Line: "Things got so bad that President Barack Obama was forced to personally intervene, ordering language mentioning God and naming Jerusalem as the rightful capital of Israel be added.

Obama had seen the language prior to the convention, a campaign source said, but did not seek to change it until after Republicans jumped on the omissions of God and Jerusalem late Wednesday.

Of course not. For Barack Obama, politics always comes first. He would prefer to express his far-left views honestly, but if doing so carries a political cost, he is always willing to throw far-left principle under the bus. For the moment, anyway: the question always remains, what will happen if he never again has to face the voters?"

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Marx ... And His Errand Boy

The Dialectic of Destruction - Murray N. Rothbard - Mises Daily: "And, as we have indicated, in the "beyond-communism" stage, the stage of universal no-ownership and therefore of no action and no use of resources, death for the entire human race would swiftly ensue.

Marx and his followers have never demonstrated any awareness of the vital importance of the problem of allocation of scarce resources. Their vision of communism is that all such economic problems are trivial, requiring neither entrepreneurship nor a price system nor genuine economic calculation — that all problems could be quickly solved by mere accounting or recording. The classic absurdity on this matter was laid down by Lenin, who accurately expressed Marx's view in declaring that the functions of entrepreneurship and of allocation of resources have been "simplified by capitalism to the utmost" to mere matters of accounting and to "the extraordinarily simple operations of watching, recording, and issuing receipts, within the reach of anybody who can read and write and knows the first four rules of arithmetic." Ludwig von Mises wryly and justly comments that Marxists and other socialists have had "no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters and figures."[9]"

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Incomplete

Instapundit » Blog Archive » I GUESS THAT’S BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE STILL HAVE JOBS: Obama: I give myself an “incomplete” on the…: "I GUESS THAT’S BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE STILL HAVE JOBS: Obama: I give myself an “incomplete” on the economy.

Posted by Glenn Reynolds at 5:03 pm"

Du'O.

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Make My Day

Ace of Spades HQ: "I've watched this like seven times now and I like it better every time. True, the first time around, I was worried that he wasn't going to come to his points. He was sometimes stammering and slow to get to his next killer line. But in each case, he did get 'round to that killer line -- in 2 seconds, rather than the professionally-preferred 0.8 seconds."

Heh.

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COTD: Clint

A salute to Clint Eastwood | Power Line:
Ron Kearns · Top Commenter · Colorado Springs, Colorado
Things are getting interesting:
1) The Demos go all gansta on Dirty Harry (do they really feel that lucky?)
2) Romney goes to the flooded areas and Obama invokes lead-from-behind and quickly follows.
3) By making the GOP convention about American excellence, the Demos will be forced to counter with... with... with... ah, well, whatever DWS comes up with will be a howler.
4) We learned 1000% more about Mitt in one night than the media was able to scrape up on Obama in 4 years. They will counter with what? His Chicago-style knee-capping of political opponents? His affection for his "typical white" grandmother? I'm sure DWS will come up with something sweet.
5) One more, the "horrifying" Todd Akin has moved from 9 points behind to 1 point behind. So much for that shiny object.

Heh.

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Where Everything Is Free But Us

Instapundit » Blog Archive » ADVICE FOR THE RNC: A reader emails: Hi, first of all, if you’re even reading this, thank you. …: "Your comment, “It’s a shame that American politics have descended into such a reign of terror” regarding reformed liberal readers’ requests not to be identified is telling. I work in an industry that is almost exclusively conservative, in a very conservative state (Texas). I’ve worked with a few liberals, and they were quite open about it. While we sometimes discussed politics at lunch or around the coffee pot, I never saw any of my fellow conservatives berate, threaten or ridicule the liberals. No one was ever called names. We respect them, even though we disagree with them.

My wife, on the other hand, works in a liberal profession. The few times she’s let her true feelings show, she’s been met with disdain, antipathy and outright disgust. She’s afraid to put a Romney sticker on her car for fear of it being vandalized in the employee parking lot. What is it that causes liberals, the so-called champions of diversity, to react so violently to conservative thoughts?

Tribalism and intellectual insecurity."

In case you can't figure out the title, it's my pick for Ryan's best line tonight.

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If You Missed Ryan's Speech, Here Are The Key Bits

RNC Schedule of Speakers: Paul Ryan Speech LIVE, Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez Speech Highlights: ""We're a full generation apart, Governor Romney and I ... there are the songs on his iPod that I've heard on the campaign bus, and in many hotel elevators ... my playlist it starts with ACDC and it ends with Zeppelin."

"None of us should have to settle for what this administration has to offer ... a country where everything is free but us."

Standing ovation for idea that college student's should not living in their childhood bedrooms staring up at fading Obama posters.

"The United States is still the greatest force for peace and liberty that this world has ever known."

Reagan evoked once more, this time via Jack Kemp.

"The choice is whether to put hard limits on economic growth or hard limits on the size of governement -- and we choose to limit government."

"We have a plan for a stronger middle class ... we will keep federal spending at 20% of GDP or less because that is enough."

"My Mom is my role model." A nice moment and standing ovation for Ryan's mom.

"So here we are $16 trillion in debt, and still he does nothing." Speech focusing on Obama's inaction, and his verbosity.

"These past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House, what is missing is leadership in the White House."

On health care: "Our nation needs this debate, we want this debate, we will win this debate."

"A Romney Ryan administration would protect and strengthen Medicare for my Mom's generation, for my generation..."

"The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we're going to stop it."

Job creation should be the president's first order of economic business. Obama did not do that, instead he squandered time on health care. "Obamacare comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country."

"Nearly 1 in 6 Americans is in poverty." "Without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?"

"Let's get this done. And that's exactly what we are going to do."

Ryan introduces the audience to his family.

"With all these attack ads, the president is just throwing away money and he's pretty experienced at that."

"I am honored by the support of this convention for vice president of the United States. I accept the duty to help lead the nation out of a jobs crisis and back to prosperity ... I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the opportunity that was given to us." "

He did an excellent job. And he had great material.

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The Great Inversion

2012: Campus PC Goes National - By Stanley Kurtz - The Corner - National Review Online: "For decades, our college classrooms have steadily been converting the study of history, the reading of our finest novels, and the practice of philosophy into little more than a debunking of the supposed race, class, and gender “domination” hidden within. Now our politics pulls the same reductionist nonsense on a brilliantly successful businessman, some of our finest religious institutions, and Americans who hope to build a pathway from welfare to work.

The college-educated suburban swing voters critical to Obama’s coalition are susceptible to this sort of nonsense, in no small part because they went to college. I’ve been arguing that these suburbanites are going to be the targets of the president’s second-term redistributive schemes. They’d rethink their support for Obama if they knew that. Yet these same suburbanites are part of a great inversion of the American electorate in which college-educated voters have migrated over time to the Democrats."

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The Horror!

Keynesianism vs. the Gold-Coin Standard - Gary North - Mises Daily: "Here, he identifies the enemy position of all Keynesians.

What they tend to ignore is that the world has tried the gold standard before and it was, in most respects, a disaster.

Here is a statement. It is a conclusion. It is not an argument.

The world tried the international gold standard from 1815 until the outbreak of World War I 1914, which was the greatest period of economic growth in recorded history. The world of 1900 would have been unrecognizable in its wealth for the masses by someone getting out of a time machine activated in 1800.

At present, as the economy grows and produces more goods the central bank can expand the money supply to keep up with output. Under the gold standard, as output increases, the money supply will be fixed and with more goods but the same amount of money, prices will tend to fall.

So, prices tend to fall under the gold standard. The horror! Why, the whole consumer price index would begin to resemble the cost of computing: ever less expensive."

This is a RTWT.

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Another Reminder

The Original Birthers? - By Victor Davis Hanson - The Corner - National Review Online: "The Left went apoplectic over Romney’s recent joke about birth certificates — perhaps a tit-for-tat shot across Obama’s bow for the prior week’s presidential evocation of the old story of Romney’s dog on top of Romney’s car. But if pundits wish to be so angry at the birther joking, then they should go after the original birthers, who may have started the  myth — the literary agency Dystel & Goderich, which for over 16 years in their promo bio listed Obama as Kenyan-born — 1991–2007 — without any apparent complaint or questioning by those who read it. That fabrication was an odd thing to do for two reasons: One, authors are customarily asked to submit biographical information to their agents and publishers, and often periodically update and edit that information in catalogues, promo material, and booklets; and, two: The Kenyan-born reference disappeared abruptly in 2007, without any explanation, right about the time that Senator Obama began his campaign for the presidency."

Either Obama was the original birther or he is a complete boob. But I repeat myself...

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Ca-llapse

California Dreaming, Chapter 2 | Power Line: "One of the great glories of California in the mid-20th century was the fact that growth liberals, like Jerry Brown’s dad, Gov. Pat Brown, built stuff.  Lots of stuff.  Especially highways, water projects, and public universities.  Stuff middle class people could use, unlike Jerry’s stupid high speed rail project and expensive boutique energy projects.  Anyone with a little gumption and halfway decent grades could attend a relatively decent public state college almost for free.  Not any more: under the rule of liberalism, tuition at our formerly low cost university system has soared, and now you can’t even get in.  Several state universities have stopped admitting in-state residents to graduate programs in favor of out-of-state and international students for the most craven of reasons—they pay even higher tuition rates, and the university system wants to fill is classrooms with out of state students to balance their bloated budgets.  Another epic failure of liberalism—a system meant to favor in-state California citizens now discriminates against them."

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Lucky For Us...

What Goes Around, Comes Around :: The Circle Bastiat: "This is rich.  Brazilizan central bank employees have gone on strike to press for a 23 percent wage increase to compensate for inflation that has taken place since June 2008.  HT to Mark Thornton."

... that inflation is only something that happens in Brazil. Riiiiight...

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Neil Armstrong, RIP

Belmont Club » The Eagle Has Landed: "A short time before he died, Neil Armstrong gave a presentation in Australia matching the footage of his landing on the moon against a modern Google map of the moon.  Anyone who has any doubts that the moon landing was real should watch it at this link. The browser will not automatically open on the correct episode. Be sure to choose Episode 4 in the videos below."

Run, don't walk to watch this. And you need to watch all 4 parts to start to get a sense of what an extraordinary yet unassuming person Armstrong was...

UPDATE:

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