If you ever needed a definition for “spin”, this is it. In response to the news today that the economy contracted -.1 percent in the final quarter of last year, Democrats are touting the claim that this is “the best-looking contraction in U.S. GDP you’ll ever see.” The claim was originally made by chief U.S. economist for Capital… Read More A Few More Contractions, and the Economy Will Really Be Rolling!
Over at Protein Wisdom, a former Marine and gun store owner speaks a few truths. Writes Jeff: Unfortunately, we’ve become expert, as a popular and political culture, at pretending we haven’t encountered those very truths we continue to molest — all in an effort to will new truths into being out of something so gossamer… Read More The Irrelevance of Conservative Despair
This is several days old, but since I greatly enjoyed David Mamet’s The Secret Knowledge: The Dismantling of American Culture (Have you not read it? You must), it would be remiss of me not to link his brilliant, hilarious essay for the Daily Beast, “Gun Laws and the Fools of Chelm.” It contains many useful arguments… Read More Gun Laws and Other Acts of Folly
I never liked Ron Paul. His positions were sound, and I found myself in agreement with many of them. But somehow he just rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed too snarky to be statesmanlike, his past was unsavory at best, and he had a tendency to use leftist arguments that I found frankly offensive.… Read More No, Rand Paul Should Not Skip the Presidential Campaign…
“We had dead Americans! What does it matter if what we said caused it wasn’t what caused it at all? We were too busy saving the people who died!”
The time has come for honesty. We cannot continue as we are, pretending to party unity. The schisms are too obvious. We talk of “establishments” and “purists” as though we all want different things. Let me suggest that this is in fact, because we want different things. Let us first talk of the Union. The… Read More The Union and the Confederacy: the Ongoing Civil War in the GOP
Back in 2008, Jeff Goldstein had a long, ugly argument with Patrick Frey (which started here) about whether Obama was a “good man”. At the time, I found the argument much ado about nothing: what difference can it possibly make if he has a good heart or not? I’m opposed to what he does in… Read More Does it Matter if He’s Eeeeeevil?
I watched Our Lord and Savior get inaugurated again at Wegman’s whilst getting some coffee. He’s graying. He looks smaller. I didn’t stick around for the address. I expected it to be the usual boilerplate, and absent some rather proggie-sounding talking points, I don’t doubt that it was. The whole concept of Obama, which even… Read More Obama is Boring
Not being a reporter, I have neither the skills nor the resources to discern fact from fiction in the Steubenville Rape Case. I trust that Stacy McCain has the right of the matter, and that the KoolKids from 4Chan (or whatever) are just desperately seeking lulz. So I’d like to talk not about the particulars,… Read More Stupid Teenagers are Stupid
Presidents win re-election as a referendum on their first term, on the people’s view of them. They don’t tend to accomplish much with that term. In fact, recent two-termers tend to spend years 5-8 getting swatted around like weathervanes by events and opposition. So there’s that. Then there’s the actual circumstances of this particular second… Read More Welcome to The Second Term
Content Blues 