Fit Republican President = Selfish, indulgent, creepy-fascist.
Fit Democrat President = Disciplined, health conscious, Adonis role model.
Pecs McGee: I don't shave my chest, I wax it.
Cyd Leslie, an Army specialist who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and other posts abroad for the past year and-a-half, has only seen her daughter’s steps on video.Whether they're friends, family, or strangers, take a moment to think about and thank the men and women in the military who keep us safe and protect our liberty.The last time Leslie saw Cheyenne in person, she would take a few tentative steps and stumble.
So to finally see her walking, much less running, is nothing short of a miracle, a taste of everything her little girl will be able to accomplish in life.
For years, 24-year-old Cyd has been hoping “kids don’t tease” Cheyenne and “wondering if she’s going to have a boyfriend.”
But when Cheyenne bounded into her arms Tuesday night, she thought, “I’ll never forget this feeling.”
In the summer of 1948, Winters, a Protestant from Boston who exported produce, worked with others to transfer two converted B-17 "Flying Fortresses" to Israel's defense forces. He personally flew one of the aircraft from Miami to Czechoslovakia, where that plane and a third B-17 were retrofitted for use as bombers.You be the judge: Who was more deserving of a Presidential pardon? Rich or Winters?"He and other volunteers from around the world defied weapons embargoes to supply the newly established Israel with critical supplies to defend itself against mounting attacks from all sides," New York Reps. Carolyn Maloney, Gary Ackerman, Jose Serrano and Brian Higgins said in a Dec. 15 letter urging Bush to pardon Charlie Winters. "Without the actions of individuals like Mr. Winters, this fledgling democracy in the Middle East almost certainly would not have survived as the surrounding nations closed in on Israel's borders."
The three B-17s were the only heavy bombers in the Israeli Air Force. It is reported that counterattacks with the bombers helped turned the war in Israel's favor. In March 1961, Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir issued a letter of commendation to Winters to recognize his contributions to Israel's survival as an independent state.
The three most prominent Democrats in national politics during the past two years -- Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton -- are all ascending from the U.S. Senate to the executive branch, creating open Senate seats for Democratic governors to fill. And, oh, what a spectacle it is -- of corruption, insider dealing, treacly dynastic politics and rank nepotism. . . . We might be witnessing the most brazen bout of cronyism since Napoleon made his relatives and minions rulers of conquered Europe. Or at least since the Kennedy family arranged in 1960 to have John Kennedy's pliable Harvard roommate keep his Massachusetts Senate seat warm until Ted turned 30 and could inherit -- er, get elected to -- it.These things, these double standards, sometimes appear so blatantly obvious, I wonder if I'm playing the role of Captain Obvious when I bring them to your attention.
The key mistake Democrats made [after Jimmy Carter won the White House] in 1976 was failing to realize what brought them to power. Democrats won because of public dissatisfaction with the previous regime, which had overseen the economic crisis, and also because of a wider fear that America would have to live with diminished expectations. But although they won on largely economic grounds, Democrats acted as if they had a sweeping mandate for cultural transformation -- for social libertarianism, affirmative action and egalitarianism, dovish internationalism, and idealistic notions of human rights. These ideas dominated a radical Congress and were enthusiastically adopted by the cohort of Carter appointments to the judiciary. They all ignored a basic principle: just because people are unhappy where they are does not mean they are willing to go anywhere you try to lead them.
In a surprise move, state Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown asked the California Supreme Court on Friday to invalidate Proposition 8. He said the November ballot measure that banned gay marriage "deprives people of the right to marry, an aspect of liberty that the Supreme Court has concluded is guaranteed by the California Constitution."It's only a surprise because he's ignoring his legal obligation to defend Prop 8--no matter his personal preference (see what I did there?). He has been antagonistic towards the traditional marriage crowd for, well, ever.
Rush Limbaugh is far closer to the great tradition of Western intellectuals than anybody in the celebrity freak-show of the Left. It is the Rush Limbaughs who became Socrates and Plato in the ancient world. They composed the Psalms and the Book of Proverbs. They were not professional scribblers. They did not found a revolutionary cult designed to overthrow all the good traditions. They were talented talkers, and even better listeners. All good thinking starts from dialogue.Read the article, it's very good.
Here is Colin Powell telling the Republican Party what to do after he voted for Obama! [...] The Republican Party nominated Powell's perfect candidate. The guy's going after moderates, independents, Democrats, a guy who is not conservative at all, McCain, didn't stand up for much conservative [...](emphasis added)
Colin Powell ... insists that conservatives and Republicans support candidates who will appeal to minorities like I guess McCain who led the effort for amnesty. He insists that conservatives and Republicans move to the center like McCain, who calls himself a maverick for doing so. General Powell insists that conservatives and Republicans provide an open tent to different ideas and views, like I guess McCain, who repeatedly trashed Republicans and made nice with Democrats. I mean, their tent's big, they just don't want us in it. John McCain is and was Colin Powell's ideal candidate. All these moderates that crossed the aisle and voted for Obama, they got their ideal candidate, and they got their ideal campaign in McCain. Once McCain was nominated as the Republican candidate, largely by independents and Democrats voting in Republican primaries, Colin Powell waited 'til the last minute, when it would do the most damage to McCain and the Republicans and endorsed Obama.
So if we try to understand Powell's thinking, which is difficult since it's incoherent, we should have all voted for McCain in the primaries, and once he was nominated, we should have voted for Obama for president. [...]
What's going on here with this Colin Powell thing is that the Washington establishment -- Powell's not a Republican. McCain's not a Republican. These guys are not even mavericks. They are Washingtonians. Washingtonians have their own culture and their own desires, and it is to matter. They don't care who's in power, they just want to be closely associated with whoever is. That's the name of the game and they want press adulation. They want to be loved and adored by the media, they want fawning treatment, they want to be thought of as something special, unique, dignified and so forth, and that's the Washington establishment. [...]
As long as you are a Republican, but you buy into an endless array of liberal causes, global warming to amnesty for illegals, and somebody who has the same fetish for compromising principles that you do, then they are going to love you. Then you turn around and you stab this person in the back by endorsing the most liberal Democrat candidate ever nominated days before the election, General Powell? [...]
I also have to question something here. How can he say he's a Republican? He gets the perfect Republican nominee, exactly the kind of candidate he wants, it's McCain, and then he sabotages McCain a few weeks before the election by endorsing Obama. How can you even claim to be a Republican, General Powell? When have you ever stuck your neck out for Republicans and conservatives? Never. I mean sabotage George W. Bush with the Armitage leak and Scooter Libby, that's just one thing, but Ronald Reagan, Bush 41, Bush 43 all helped advance General Powell's career.
[...] I've noticed on the one hand General Powell claims to stand above politics as a big claim to fame. Yet, on the other hand, he jumps in from time to time, but only to attack the conservative base of the Republican Party. When's the last time, the first time, when is any time he has let loose or criticized a liberal Democrat on any issue? Now, here's the problem. General Powell, and folks, this problem I think is systemic in the Republican Party in Washington. People like General Powell seek to ingratiate themselves with the people who despise the Republican Party and despise the conservative movement. They're out there preaching moderation all along the way, when instead you should be preaching principle.
Principle is what got you where you are. Moderation is what keeps you where you are with this great reputation, great image but no substance, no principles, no core belief. If somebody had to tell you who Colin Powell is, what would they say? What does he stand for? What does General Powell stand for? ... You don't know. There aren't any core beliefs you can go rat-tat-tat down the list and say, yep, this is who they are. Was Abraham Lincoln great because he saw compromise during the Civil War or was he great because he insisted on total and complete victory? Great people take stands on principle, not moderation. Some of us think that individual liberty, limited constitutional government, and increased support for the military by civilians are principles worth defending. Maybe General Powell can enlighten us, since he's failed to do that so far on the great liberal or moderate Democrat principles that seem to intrigue him. What is it about Obama that intrigued him? What are these principles? Or was it the way Obama speaks?
[...] One of the things he said is he resents Sarah Palin because she kept talking about small towns. He said nobody lives in small towns and that's why they're small. "I'm from the Bronx. Something wrong with my values?" he asked. What is this hatred for conservatives and small town people and Sarah Palin? It's because they are effective. They represent challenges to the Washingtonians' control of the Republican Party. I know a lot of people that are from the Bronx, General Powell, and if you think the values there in the Bronx today reflect the ones you grew up with, take a trip back and see if the street corners and the activities there are the same as when you were growing up, General Powell.
Gov. Paterson's proposed $121 billion budget hits New Yorkers in their iPods - and nickels-and-dimes them in lots of other places, too.(h/t Matt L.)Trying to close a $15.4 billion budget gap, Paterson called for 88 new fees and a host of other taxes, including an "iPod tax" that taxes the sale of downloaded music and other "digitally delivered entertainment services."
"We're going to have to take some extreme measures," Paterson said Tuesday after unveiling the slash-and-burn budget.
The proposal, which needs legislative approval, did not include broad-based income tax increases, but relied on smaller ones to raise $4.1 billion from cash-strapped New Yorkers.
Movie tickets, taxi rides, soda, beer, wine, cigars and massages would be taxed under Paterson's proposal. It also extends sales taxes to cable and satellite TV services and removes the tax exemption for clothes costing less than $110.
A chief executioner to one of Saddam's sons has revealed how he helped drag two victims into a cage to be devoured by lions.Yeah, things were a lot better back in the good ol' days.
The executioner said that he was ordered to seize two 19-year-old students and take them to a farm of Uday Hussein, Saddam's oldest son who was killed by American forces last week.
As soon as they arrived the students were dragged to a cage containing the lions and forced inside. "I saw the head of the first student literally come off his body with the first bite," he said. He then had to stand and watch the animals devour the two young men: "By the time they were finished there was little left but for the bones and bits and pieces of unwanted flesh."
He was told later that the two young men "had competed with Uday where some young ladies were concerned."
The GOP has the right principles to become the majority party again. What it must have are fresh, energetic voices who apply those principles to meeting the needs of American families. And it must put in place the infrastructure that will take that message and amplify it.Like EG Karl said, we've had a few wins (Chambliss, & LA congressional races) since Obama's Big Win in November. Ever the party of eternal optimism, we are Happy Warriors.
While there are, of course, circumstances in which oil can exacerbate tensions and be a source of conflict, it can also act as a peacemaker and source of stability. So to identify America's "foreign oil dependency" as a source of vulnerability and weakness is just too neat and easy.It's at least worth considering because, like so many other things, the question of oil is not black & white.
CHICAGO - The ongoing corruption probe into Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich took a dramatic turn this evening, as federal agents working for US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald announced that they had seized the governor's eBay account. It is as yet unknown how the latest seizure will effect the outcome of the case.Oh, and apparently Dick Durbin is also for sale. He still works.
IOWAHAWK EXCLUSIVE! RUSH UPDATE!
many think Humans vs. Zombies doesn’t reflect well on Goucher. Political science major Michael Harmon said he would rather Goucher be known for its academics or for its requirement that all students study abroad. He’s disturbed some underclassmen chose to attend Goucher because of the game.Yep, Conor went to Goucher because he heard they had 'crazy, weeks-long games of Humans vs. Zombies,' yeah!"It was definitely one of the things that made me want to come here," zombie player Conor Moran said.
It didn’t take long before the apologist industry was cranked up to explain the latest terrorist outrage in Bombay. Joshua Kurlantzick at the New Republic suggested that “After years of moderation, India’s Muslims—including even some middle-class Muslims—finally may be striking back at the discrimination stacked against them.” A piece in Time chimed in by noting that “the roots of Muslim rage run deep in India, nourished by a long-held sense of injustice....” So falls into place the usual response of Western liberals to any acts of intolerant savagery committed by Muslim “militants” —that it is somehow in some way caused by those they attacked, that “Muslim rage” over their mistreatment leads Muslims to slaughter Hindus, Jews, Christians, Orthodox Russians and even thoroughly secular Europeans.(h/t Ace)...
Some intrepid, politically incorrect soul might even have the temerity to draw attention to the fact the Islamic terrorists seemed to have grievances against just about everybody, every ethnic or religious group that isn’t Muslim along with all those Muslims who refuse to fall in line with the Islamist project. Muslim terrorists have, after all, killed far more Muslims than non-Muslims in the past decade.
The sheer diversity of it all is part of the problem. There are so many rag-tag Muslim terrorist groups launching so many attacks based on such a bewildering array of grievances—infidels in the land of Mecca and Medina, the existence of Israel, disputes over Kashmir, Russian colonialism in Chechnya, etc. —that we bend ourselves into pretzels trying to define them all as understandable responses to mistreatment.
We are left to wonder why Muslims here, there and everywhere seem to be so badly mistreated and respond to such mistreatment in such drearily predictable fashion, which is to blow other people (and sometimes themselves ) up.
Declaring "no mob veto," a full-page ad in the New York Times on Friday denounced the "violence and intimidation" directed at members of the LDS Church who supported California's ban on gay marriage.Of course, when it comes to intramural scrabbles about religious matters, many of these churches will still attack the LDS. Prop 8 cooperation (and other, similar cooperation) will not halt the institutional jealousies that arise from the increasing growth of the LDS church, but when it comes to matters of shared values, I think they will remember the horsepower members of the LDS church brought to the issue."When thugs ... terrorize any place of worship, especially those of a religious minority, responsible voices need to speak clearly: Religious wars are wrong; they are also dangerous," reads the advertisement paid for by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, based in Washington, D.C.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has come under fire from gay rights activists across the country since coming out in support of California's Proposition 8, an amendment to the state's constitution that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
In a statement Friday, church officials expressed gratitude to the dozen civil rights and religious leaders, ranging from Catholic to evangelical Christian to Orthodox Jew, who attached their names to the advertisement.
"This was a thoughtful and generous gesture at a time when the right of free expression of people of faith has come under attack," said Elder M. Russell Ballard, a member of the LDS Church's Quorum of the Twelve, in a statement. "We join with those of all religious faiths and political persuasions who have called for reasoned and civil discourse on matters that affect our nation."
Matthew Holland, a political science professor at Brigham Young University, said he sees an unprecedented show of support for the LDS Church from a wide spectrum of coalitions, affinities, associations and even some unexpected groups.The next time Mitt Romney (or some other Mormon) runs for President and members of the religious right raise questions about his religion, whatever, he'll be able to point to his very good speech about religion in American and the important role Mormons have played in this country in defending marriage and the family."The fact that they are willing to step forward and, in such a prominent way, be so supportive is something that we haven't really seen before," Holland said Friday night.
Many of the individuals who signed the ad are prominent national and international figures, Holland said, including Richard Cizik, vice president for Governmental Affairs of the National Association of Evangelicals; Nathan Diament, director of the Institute for Public Affairs of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; William A. Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights; Douglas Laycock, a law professor at the University of Michigan; and Chris Seiple, president of the Institute for Global Engagement.
Holland said he finds it significant that high-profile members of conservative Evangelical groups supported the ad because of divisive sentiments that emerged during LDS Church-member Mitt Romney's failed presidential campaign.
"These very prominent leaders from the Evangelical right are now stepping up to give voice and solidarity to the church," he said.
COUNTER-TERRORISM POLICE today rounded up hundreds of Britons suspected of membership in organizations described as “irritating” to Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The exact number was not released, but police officials said that many more are expected, “depending on the Prime Minister’s mood this morning.”For a more serious take on the very serious erosion of democracy in the UK evidenced by Brown's arrest of Damian Green, Shadow Minister for Immigration, read Roger Kimball.“Our sole purpose is to keep citizens safe from the threat of international terrorism,” said Thomas Ayckroyd, a spokesman for the Home Office. “While these detainees may all be British citizens, they were clearly engaged in treasonous acts designed to destabilize Her Majesty’s government by embarrassing, irritating, or otherwise inconveniencing the Prime Minister.”
Under mounting pressure, Los Angeles Film Festival director Richard Raddon has ankled his post.Unless I'm mistaken, this is exactly the type of unpopular speech and political opinion Hollywood spent the last 40 years making movies about that said, in essence, 'never again.'Raddon and Film Independent (FIND), the festival's parent org, have faced a barrage of protests over Raddon's contribution [ed. note: He contributed $1500] to the successful Yes on Prop. 8 campaign that banned same-sex marriage in California.
After bloggers published his name, culled from public records of donors, Raddon tendered his first resignation on Nov. 13 to Film Independent's board of directors. It was not accepted, and Film Independent released a statement saying, "Our organization does not police the personal, religious or political choices of any employee, member or filmmaker."
Yet Internet message boards and other published reports kept the issue at the center of a growing protest movement that has targeted "Yes on 8" donors including the Mormon Church and Cinemark Theaters, whose CEO was a contributor.
On Monday, Raddon submitted a second resignation. Those close to the org described Monday's conference call with the board of directors as emotional. While Raddon's contribution had caused some internal angst, he was well liked within the org.
On Tuesday, Film Independent issued a statement saying, "With great reluctance, Film Independent has accepted Richard Raddon's resignation. Rich's service to the independent film community and to Film Independent has been nothing less than extraordinary. He has always shown complete commitment to our core principles of equality and diversity during his long tenure."
Raddon, a devout Mormon who took the reins of the fest in 2000, said: "I have always held the belief that all people, no matter race, religion or sexual orientation, are entitled to equal rights. I prefer to keep the details around my contribution through my church a private matter. But I am profoundly sorry for the negative attention that my actions have drawn to Film Independent and for the hurt and pain that is being experienced in the GLBT community."
On the campaign trail, Senator Barack Obama offered a pledge that electrified and motivated his liberal base, vowing to “end the war” in Iraq.Like Ace, I wonder what his supporters will say now to excuse his betrayal of what was the most important issue to them during this campaign: The complete and total withdrawal of American "occupying" forces from Iraq.But as he moves closer to the White House, President-elect Obama is making clearer than ever that tens of thousands of American troops will be left behind in Iraq, even if he can make good on his campaign promise to pull all combat forces out within 16 months.
“I said that I would remove our combat troops from Iraq in 16 months, with the understanding that it might be necessary — likely to be necessary — to maintain a residual force to provide potential training, logistical support, to protect our civilians in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said this week as he introduced his national security team.
Publicly at least, Mr. Obama has not set a firm number for that “residual force,” a phrase certain to become central to the debate on the way ahead in Iraq, though one of his national security advisers, Richard Danzig, said during the campaign that it could amount to 30,000 to 55,000 troops. Nor has Mr. Obama laid out any timetable beyond 16 months for troop drawdowns, or suggested when he believes a time might come for a declaration that the war is over.
In the meantime, military planners are drawing up tentative schedules aimed at meeting both Mr. Obama’s goal for withdrawing combat troops, with a target of May 2010, and the Dec. 31, 2011, date for sending the rest of American troops home that is spelled out in the new agreement between the United States and the Iraqi government.
That status-of-forces agreement remains subject to change, by mutual agreement, and Army planners acknowledge privately that they are examining projections that could see the number of Americans hovering between 30,000 and 50,000 — and some say as high as 70,000 — for a substantial time even beyond 2011.
This year will be remembered not just for one of the worst financial crises in American history, but also as the moment when economists abandoned their principles. There used to be a consensus that selective intervention in the economy was bad. In the last 12 months this belief has been shattered.Yup. You can say that again. "Willy-nilly" is the operative hyphenated word.Practically every day the government launches a massively expensive new initiative to solve the problems that the last day's initiative did not. It is hard to discern any principles behind these actions. The lack of a coherent strategy has increased uncertainty and undermined the public's perception of the government's competence and trustworthiness.
MUMBAI - Ajmal Amir Kasab, the sole surviving member of the 10-man team of Pakistani gunmen that left hundreds dead or wounded after a bloody three day rampage in Mumbai, today blamed the mayhem on an "email mixup" that left him and his colleagues unaware that Barack Obama had won election as President of the United States."What? Oh bloody hell, now you tell me," said Kasab, as he was led away in handcuffs by Indian security forces.
Kasab, 21, apologized to Indian President Pratibha Patil, explaining that no one in his group had known about the recent U.S. election results.
"Boy, talk about having egg on the face," said a visibly embarrassed Kasab. "If we knew Bush was on his way out, obviously we would have called off the crazy random baby-shootings and martyrdom stuff, and signed on with the Peace Corps or Habitat for Humanity. At this point I guess all I can say is 'my bad.'"
Soon the moonbats won't have Bush to blame for the world's problems. Strike that. They'll be blaming him for everything for years to come. Oh, I get it now. Nevermind. That's why Iowahawk's satire is so smart. And funny.
If you have tips, questions, comments or suggestions, email me at lybberty@gmail.com.
[...] we’re in danger of missing the forest for the trees. The forest is the ideology. It’s the ideology that determines whether you can find enough young hotshot guys in the neighborhood willing to strap on a suicide belt or (rather more promising as a long-term career) at least grab an AK and shoot up a hotel lobby. Or, if active terrorists are a bit thin on the ground, whether you can count at least on some degree of broader support on the ground. You’re sitting in some distant foreign capital but you’re minded to pull off a Bombay-style operation in, say, Amsterdam or Manchester or Toronto. Where would you start? Easy. You know the radical mosques, and the other ideological-front organizations. You’ve already made landfall.(emphasis added)
It’s missing the point to get into debates about whether this is the “Deccan Mujahideen” or the ISI or al-Qaeda or Lashkar-e-Taiba. That’s a reductive argument. It could be all or none of them. The ideology has been so successfully seeded around the world that nobody needs a memo from corporate HQ to act: There are so many of these subgroups and individuals that they intersect across the planet in a million different ways. It’s not the Cold War, with a small network of deep sleepers being directly controlled by Moscow. There are no membership cards, only an ideology. That’s what has radicalized hitherto moderate Muslim communities from Indonesia to the Central Asian stans to Yorkshire, and co-opted what started out as more or less conventional nationalist struggles in the Caucasus and the Balkans into mere tentacles of the global jihad.
[...]
This isn’t law enforcement but an ideological assault — and we’re fighting the symptoms not the cause. Islamic imperialists want an Islamic society, not just in Palestine and Kashmir but in the Netherlands and Britain, too. Their chances of getting it will be determined by the ideology’s advance among the general Muslim population, and the general Muslim population’s demographic advance among everybody else.
So Bush is history, and we have a new president who promises to heal the planet, and yet the jihadists don’t seem to have got the Obama message that there are no enemies, just friends we haven’t yet held talks without preconditions with. This isn’t about repudiating the Bush years, or withdrawing from Iraq, or even liquidating Israel. It’s bigger than that. And if you don’t have a strategy for beating back the ideology, you’ll lose.
Many people believe that after suffering through a severe winter, the Pilgrims’ food shortages were resolved the following spring when the Native Americans taught them to plant corn and a Thanksgiving celebration resulted. In fact, the pilgrims continued to face chronic food shortages for three years until the harvest of 1623. Bad weather or lack of farming knowledge did not cause the pilgrims’ shortages. Bad economic incentives did.Be sure and read the full Volokh post to learn things like, Native Americans understood private property rights before they traded away Manhattan for beads and a few deer skins.
In 1620 Plymouth Plantation was founded with a system of communal property rights. Food and supplies were held in common and then distributed based on equality and need as determined by Plantation officials. People received the same rations whether or not they contributed to producing the food, and residents were forbidden from producing their own food. Governor William Bradford, in his 1647 history, Of Plymouth Plantation, wrote that this system was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. The problem was that young men, that were most able and fit for labour, did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men’s wives and children without any recompense. Because of the poor incentives, little food was produced.
Faced with potential starvation in the spring of 1623, the colony decided to implement a new economic system. Every family was assigned a private parcel of land. They could then keep all they grew for themselves, but now they alone were responsible for feeding themselves. While not a complete private property system, the move away from communal ownership had dramatic results.
This change, Bradford wrote, had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been. Giving people economic incentives changed their behavior. Once the new system of property rights was in place, the women now went willingly into the field, and took their little ones with them to set corn; which before would allege weakness and inability.
Once the Pilgrims in the Plymouth Plantation abandoned their communal economic system and adopted one with greater individual property rights, they never again faced the starvation and food shortages of the first three years. It was only after allowing greater property rights that they could feast without worrying that famine was just around the corner.
The latest number, which includes the Citigroup rescue, is $7.7 trillion. That’s roughly half of America’s GDP.Really? You think everything they've done so far is just hunky dory?
[...]
[A]ny way you slice it, we are talking about really, really large amounts of money here. Barry Ritholtz, a financial blogger and Wall Street analyst, offers some perspective. Adjusting for inflation, the Marshall Plan cost $115.3 billion. The Louisiana Purchase: $217 billion. The race to the moon: $237 billion. The New Deal: $500 billion (estimated). The Korean War: $454 billion. The Iraq war: $597 billion.
You can add all of these things together and still not come close to what taxpayers are on the hook for already. You could even throw in the Savings and Loan bailout ($256 billion), the Vietnam War ($698 billion) and all of NASA ($851 billion) and still come up short.
[...]
Obama says he doesn’t want spending as usual when it comes to formulating his impending mother of all stimulus packages. (Estimates vary from $500 billion to $700 billion, but who knows how high that number will go?)
So far, all we know for sure is that he wants massive increases in infrastructure “investment.” That’s fine with me, so long as it’s the infrastructure we need (though history shows such expenditures usually come on-line well after a recession is already over).
But rather than blow money on a lavish reenactment of the New Deal, or continue bailing out undeserving corporations, why not really think outside the box? Rep. Louie Gohmert (R., Texas) suggests an across-the-board reprieve on paying 2008 income taxes. This would leave an extra $1.2 trillion in the hands of Americans, who are the best stewards of their own money. Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Mundell proposes a one-year moratorium on corporate income taxes in order to stimulate investment, job creation and the like. That wouldn’t be as popular, for understandable reasons.
The details can be negotiated, but this sort of approach would certainly create more jobs and spur more consumer demand than paying for a lot of asphalt. It would buy a lot more prosperity than any corporate bailout. Politically, it could buy Obama and Congress a year to formulate a serious tax-reform proposal. And — here’s the amazing part — it would be much cheaper than what we’ve spent already.
Consider first an op-ed article in Sunday’s Los Angeles Times by Martha Nussbaum, a well-known professor of law and ethics at the University of Chicago. The article was headlined “Terrorism in India has many faces.” But one face that Nussbaum fails to mention specifically is that of Lashkar-e-Taiba, the Islamic terror group originating in Pakistan that seems to have been centrally involved in the attack on Mumbai.(emphasis added)This is because Nussbaum’s main concern is not explaining or curbing Islamic terror. Rather, she writes that “if, as now seems likely, last week’s terrible events in Mumbai were the work of Islamic terrorists, that’s more bad news for India’s minority Muslim population.” She deplores past acts of Hindu terror against India’s Muslims. She worries about Muslim youths being rounded up on suspicion of terrorism with little or no evidence. And she notes that this is “an analogue to the current ugly phenomenon of racial profiling in the United States.”
So jihadists kill innocents in Mumbai — and Nussbaum ends up decrying racial profiling here. Is it just that liberal academics are required to include some alleged ugly American phenomenon in everything they write?