First Principles

Well, no big surprises.  He made the same promises that he made a year ago, and the only difference is that now we can be even more sure he won’t keep any of them.
The big takeaway from me on this was just how unserious this speech was. 

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When I heard that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, my first reaction was just to laugh.  It represents a level of absurdity beyond which no other reaction is frankly possible.  Is there anyone out there who honestly can take this seriously?

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Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently sat down with ABC’s Jake Tapper, and the discussion inevitably turned to health care.  From that short discussion, the Prime Minister revealed two important things for us to keep in mind – one intentional, and one probably not so much.
Most important was the accident.  When asked if Canadian waiting [...]

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Obama has declared the program a “success.” But what does that mean?  Consider:

Congress authorized $1 Billion for the program, and expected it to last until November.  It didn’t make it past the first week of August.  This is an important thing to consider when considering the President’s own spending and deficit projections.
That first Billion was [...]

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I just got home from Reno’s Tea Party, and it was great fun.  What better way to spend America’s Birthday than to talk and think and debate and celebrate the founding ideas of the United States!
There was certainly anger in evidence, and rightfully so.  But that was a small undercurrent in what (to my great [...]

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I recently bought a new car.  I test drove an Accord I really liked, but knowing I needed to be careful not to get sucked in (and having a smarter-than-me wife who reins me in), I told them I wanted to go test drive some other brands of cars.  The saleswoman said, “That’s fine – [...]

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Awesome!  Pirates, you messed with the wrong country.  And your exploded heads, courtesy some sharp-shootin’ Navy SEALs, is your reward.
Good on President Obama for authorizing it.  He correctly recognized that these are not people you can negotiate with, and acted accordingly.  This is a great day for America.
Now let’s hope Obama can learn from this [...]

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(Updated – see below.)
I don’t understand the problem with the current pirate standoff in the Gulf of Aden.  The situation is relatively simple.  The American merchant ship is safe, as is most of the crew.  The pirates have one hostage, but are themselves stranded in a lifeboat with no gas, and limited provisions.  Sitting right [...]

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What do you call it when a gift is forced on you, “for your own good” as well as the good of your family and neighbors? And then what happens when you try to give that gift back, and aren’t allowed to? What happens when the response to the attempt to give that [...]

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Via Instapundit, this chart is just downright scary.  And it shows how you can tell a multi-billion dollar lie by hiding it in the literal truth.

Barack Obama said again tonight that he intends to half the deficit by the end of his first term, and this chart makes clear that this is the literal truth.
But [...]

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Today, Obama signed the uber-porky federal budget, which is plenty bad enough at a time when the federal government needs more than ever to watch every penny.  But along with it, he included a signing statement declaring that he considered 5 of the provisions he was signing into law unconstitutional, and would not enforce them.
Good [...]

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Last week, UCONN’s men’s basketball coach Jim Calhoun put the press conference beatdown on a sniveling reporter who tried to speak truth to power by asking him about his big salary of $1.6 million per year in a time of vast budget deficits.  The coach pointed out that his efforts earn $12 million per year [...]

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A friend of mine sent me this:

These communist dictator Obama posters creep me out generally, but this one just made me smile.  Part of it was that Optimus Prime was such a hero to me as a kid, but there was something else about it.  I couldn’t quite put my finger on it until I [...]

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In President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, he complained on several occasions about his “inherited deficit.”  I heard him do it again this morning.  It was a classless dig and unnecessary to say, but beyond the rudeness it of course was true, at least to a point.  George Bush spent too much money on social entitlements [...]

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Via House of Eratosthenes, best summation of a Non-State of the Union State of the Union speech ever:

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Yesterday in the RGJ, there was a piece by local columnist David Jacobs snarkily noting that neither George Bush nor Congressional Republicans (back when they held majorities) were all that fiscally conservative.  He further suggested that lack of economic smarts helped cause the economic problems we have now.
He’s right.
So why, then, would he endorse the [...]

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Amused Cynic points out this centuries-old but all-too-relevant warning from James Madison in Federalist No. 61:
It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if [...]

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At a protest of President Obama:
They held their signs up high: “Don’t tread on me,” “Spend all you want, I’ll pick up the tab,” “I’ll keep my freedom! You keep the change!” “Free fertility drugs now.” And “B.O. smells and so does Socialism.”
A Gilbert woman, with a sign that said, “Fund bikini wax now,” said [...]

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I recently received a fascinating small business take on the stimulus, which articulated very well some thought I have had that have been percolating for awhile.  The bottom line is that while we may argue about whether spending or tax cuts are the best way to “stimulate” the economy, the worst possible thing you can [...]

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Despite harboring insurgents killing our soldiers in Iraq, and supplying Hezbollah terrorists elsewhere in the region, Obama has decided to make overtures to Syria a first-month priority, sending no less than John Kerry to that country to make sure they know how friendly we are these days to our certain-to-be-soon-to-be-former enemies.
(For some unrelated reason the [...]

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