If you hear a deafening “BOI-OI-OING” coming from every point in the known universe at the same time, please don’t worry. It’s just our reality rebounding from the weight of the irony former President Bill Clinton dumped into it on Friday.
Bill Clinton doesn’t like all the misinformation and rumors floating on the Internet. And he thinks the United Nations or the U.S. government should create an agency to do something about it.
“It would be a legitimate thing to do,” Clinton said in an interview airing Friday on CNBC.
Yes, folks, that Bill Clinton — you know, the one who committed serial sexual harassment and perjury and managed, thanks to a crack rumor and misinformation team led by Lanny Davis, to come out of it as the victim — wants a government agency to create a World Department of Internet Fact-Checking.
Oh, but it gets better. So much better. Take a gander at which completely accurate, not even slightly biased organizations he wants to use as models.
Tags: Bill Clinton, Nanny State, The Internet
For those of you keeping track of the 2012 Presidential race — and really, why wouldn’t you want to keep track with the election looming a scant 18 months away! — you can check Mike Huckabee off the list. He announced tonight on his television show, which makes him a better living than 18 months on the road as a candidate would, that his heart simply wouldn’t let him run.
If only he had gotten Celine Dion to sing “My Heart Won’t Go On”.
Katrina Trinko has a few guesses at NRO about which GOP hopefuls this will help and hurt. You can get more commentary from the links at this memeorandum thread.
I won’t hazard a guess about what the Huckabee announcement means. I was interested to see that he made it on his television show. It seems, thus far, that GOP candidates have preferred to use different platforms for their announcements than others have in the past. Newt Gingrich announced his candidacy on Facebook and Twitter. Herman Cain has used mid-sized and small blogs, Twitter, and local talk radio to spread the word about his coming announcement in Georgia next week.
Does that mean that more candidates will go the less-traveled route with their campaigns? Perhaps not, but I’d sure like to see a few more of them go those routes.
And now, links!
- If you read nothing else today, please read Andrew Ferguson’s profile of legendary screenwriter and playwright David Mamet. Mamet has a book coming out next month in which I am keenly interested. You can get a taste of what is to come from the Village Voice essay he wrote in 2008.
- So, the Socialist head of the IMF is under arrest for sexual assault, huh? I bet a few members of the board wish they hadn’t thrown arch-villain neocon Paul Wolfowitz under the bus right about now. I bet they also wish they had taken Mr. Strauss-Khan’s earlier sexual peccadilloes a bit more seriously.
- Introducing President Gutsy McGutserson!
- This is about the best response I can imagine to Bill Maher’s purposeful anti-religious bigotry…aside from a gut-punch, that is.
- Huh. I guess Barack Obama really is like FDR.
- Spiking the Ball to Show Some National Pride = Bad. Dancing Osama bin Laden’s Corpse Around Like A Marionette to Sell a Political Ideology = AWESOME!
- The good news is that In-N-Out Burger has moved eastward. The bad news is that at the current rate of progress, I’ll be long-dead before it gets to the East Coast.
- I really don’t care what it does. If a machine has a name like The Antimatter-Hunting Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, it’s instantly one of the five coolest pieces of tech on the planet.
- This is the best baseball catch I’ve seen in a lot of years. Prepare to be amazed.
Tags: Linky Love
Not much to say on semi-lovely Saturday, except that Rebecca Black should probably get to work on a follow-up hit song. I figure she has about six to go before that well runs dry.
And now, links!
- It’s no surprise to me that young people in dangerous and lawless places are brutalized. It does surprise me that the organization that sent those young people out have not only refused to react sufficiently to ensure a greater measure of safety for their volunteers but have also deliberately covered up heinous crimes committed by their own people.
- This seems like a good step in the direction of returning power to the states, where most of our governing horsepower belongs, but I’d be happier if we actually repealed the 17th Amendment.
- For a guy reluctant to let the American people spike the bin Laden football, he sure has choreographed a rather elaborate end zone celebration.
- Once in a while the Republican Party does something clever. Mark this date.
- Then that same party does a series of bone-stupid things that make their celver thing look like a complete accident.
- Why should we teach American exceptionalism in schools? It’s not like America is special or anything, right?
- Andrew Malcolm thinks Ron Paul’s campaign announcement is very important. He has a point.
- Yesterday was the anniversary of the Mexican-American War. The Brittanica Blog has a detailed and very interesting article on the war that ought to please the history buff in your life.
- A giant mitt to catch space debris? Okay, I like it.
Tags: Linky Love
Robert Costa, over at NRO, wrote a lengthy article on Herman Cain yesterday. If you don’t know much about him, his piece will give you a solid introduction. I couldn’t help but notice that a number of commenters there brought up the whole elected office thing. If they’d listened to this week’s episode of The Delivery, they’d have at least heard an argument for why that doesn’t matter.
And these days, folks seem to be amenable to the argument.
And now, links!
- What the federal government is doing to Boeing is simply criminal. We should never allow any government agency to do thug work for labor unions or any other group. Heads need to roll.
- I’m not sure why means-testing for Social Security and Medicare hasn’t already happened. It makes a ton of sense.
- Shouldn’t a Senate candidate have a pretty good idea how big our national debt is?
- Of course Paul Ryan’s “stock has taken a hit”. Anytime a politician lays a solid policy on the table, the naysayers are going to attack. Some of those attacks will score, fair or not. I’d bet that Ryan will end up far better than, say, the President, who has yet to put out a serious budget proposal.
- Bertha Lewis, former head shill for ACORN and proud socialist, sings about as well as she understand what makes the United States work.
- We really should hear more from Dr. Oscar Biscet. That we do not — that the progressives who proclaim piously how much they desire human rights for all studiously ignore his very existence — is a black mark on our nation.
- When did C. Montgomery Burns take over the Daytime Emmys?
- At this point, I don’t think there’s anything Ron Paul can say that would dissuade his faithful minions. Reasonable people, on the other hand, can finally wash their hands of him.
Tags: Linky Love
So much for the Presidential promise that his shiny new Obamacare milkshake would bring all the health care providers to the yard.
President Barack Obama’s main idea for getting quality health care at less cost was in jeopardy Wednesday after key medical providers called his administration’s initial blueprint so complex it’s unworkable.
Just over a month ago, top officials released long-awaited draft regulations for “accountable care organizations,” networks of doctors and hospitals that would collaborate to keep Medicare patients healthier and share in the savings with taxpayers. Obama’s health care overhaul law envisioned quickly setting up hundreds of such networks around the county to lead a bottom-up reform of America’s bloated health care system.
But in an unusual rebuke, an umbrella group representing premier organizations such as the Mayo Clinic wrote the administration Wednesday saying that more than 90 percent of its members would not participate, because the rules as written are so onerous it would be nearly impossible for them to succeed.
Note the silly notion from the AP that the networks, designed and regulated by Washington, comprise a “bottom-up” reform. What the government is trying to do with these “accountable care organizations” is substitute a Rube Goldberg bureaucratic contraption for free market forces.
It won’t work because government can’t help but be overly complex, top-heavy, and a huge wet blanket on innovation and enterprise. And that’s what the Obama administration heard from the providers they hoped would buy into their scheme. According to the survey, the health care providers almost unanimously said the President’s miracle cure is too complicated, too costly, and too hostile to business success. In other words, the criticisms many of us had of Obamacare way back before the Democrats jammed this horrid pile of totalitarian dung down our throats were entirely correct.
These regulations are going to happen, by the way, whether we like them or not. They’re part of Obamacare and, until we get its repeal, we’re going to live under the dictates of a bunch of left-wing control freaks. Might as well re-light the repeal fires under your members of Congress (and your Presidential candidates, too).
Tags: National Health Care
Tuesday afternoon, in a desperate attempt to change the national conversation from the subjects of his partisan football-spiking of the Abbottabad raid and the still-abysmal economy, the President went to Texas to give a speech on immigration. Unfortunately, his speech was condescending, insulting, nearly entirely fact-free, and…did I mention nearly entirely fact-free?
The very least he could have done was to acknowledge the wildfires that have destroyed about 2 million acres in northern Texas and explain why he refused to declare the state a disaster area.
So much for that President of all the United States thing.
And now, links!
- It’s Herman Cain’s world; the rest of the GOP field is just living in it.
- The blatant abuse of power at the NLRB is now starting to get some national attention, as it should. The Governor of South Carolina has demanded action and the CEO of Boeing took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to lay out his bill of grievances.
- Say what you will about the Democratic Party, but it’s as dedicated to its horrible ideas as Normal Bates was to his mother.
- If you looked up the word “smarmy” in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Martin Bashir. Also, “oleaginous”, “dishonest”, and “hack”.
- I’m pretty sure we’ve done the whole “European bureaucrats have complete access to your travel plans” thing before, haven’t we? I don’t remember that it turned out all that well.
- If voters decide to have one litmus test for the GOP nominee, this should be it.
- Somebody set the Crab Nebula up the bomb!
Tags: Linky Love
I hope very much that Episode 93 ends up in the hands of a few highly-placed members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, because I said a few things they need to hear. The whole issue of political new media and its woeful lack of funding by folks who have no problems slinging money by the catapult-load at losers like Charlie Crist has been on my mind quite a lot lately. I know I’ve talked about it before, but I seem to be one of the very few who are. It would be very nice if that changed. Perhaps Rence Priebus, the new RNC Chair, could take that up himself.
And while I’m at it, why don’t I wish for a pony?
There’s some good first-half stuff about the President’s enduring love-affair for strawmen and a solid bit on why it’s not all that important to me for a President to have held elected office before. All in all, you have a solid show on your hands this week. Enjoy!
We’re also down to the last two days of the Deliver for The Delivery fundraiser. If you’ve been waiting until the last minute to donate, well, it’s time. Also, if you’re a Koch Brother, a couple grand wouldn’t exactly go amiss if you were to drop it in my PayPal account. Just saying…
Tags: Conservatives, Herman Cain, The Delivery
I honestly don’t know what moral frame of reference leads you to the conclusion that it’s worse to waterboard someone for a few minutes than it is to shoot them in the face but somehow the administration has boxed itself into exactly that corner. I pity the President’s poor national security adviser who had to try to explain the logic of the administration’s position to Chris Wallace and the rest of America on Fox News. It’s almost too painful to read, but you should read it anyhow. It’ll provide an interesting booked to this post by Lee Stranahan on the violent partisanship that’s taken over progressive politics lately.
And now, links.
- I’m pretty sure there’s a newspaper out there who could use a good movie reviewer. That newspaper needs to pay Ace whatever it must to hire him and they should use this review of Thor to justify the paychecks.
- A couple weeks ago, I wrote about a labor relations class at the University of Missouri that taught a whole lot more than just the facts. Well, here’s a first-hand account what they were teaching, from someone who had to sit through it.
- Fact-checkers? What fact-checkers?
- How is it that every time some left-wing matches up against on Fox News, it ends with progressive humiliation?
- The immediate future of Obamacare is playing out right now in Massachusetts and it’s not pretty at all. Well, okay. It’s pretty if you consider long waiting lines and a doctor shortage acceptable.
- I think Thaddeus McCotter would make an interesting candidate for President. He’s a bit of a conservative darling and a frequent guest on the “Red Eye” show on Fox News. Then again, he was also very much in favor of the Big Three auto bailout and the massive union pension bailout, which should kill his candidacy for solid conservatives.
- Wait…there’s really going to be a The Expendables 2? And it’s going to feature Jean Claude van Damme as a villain? Oh sign me up right now!
Tags: Linky Love
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