Monday, October 13, 2008

An honest politician! etc.

A refreshingly honest quote from Alabama congressman and Congressional Black Caucus member Artur Davis:

“Like a lot of my Democratic colleagues I was too slow to appreciate the recklessness of Fannie and Freddie. I defended their efforts to encourage affordable homeownership when in retrospect I should have heeded the concerns raised by their regulator in 2004. Frankly, I wish my Democratic colleagues would admit when it comes to Fannie and Freddie, we were wrong.”

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Woops: "Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's last name is spelled 'Osama' on hundreds of absentee ballots mailed out last week to voters in Rensselaer County. he misspelling, which elections officials on both sides of the aisle insist was simply a typo, is causing embarrassment for the county."

If only it had been O-same-a, it would have been accurate for this ultimate business-as-usual Democrat.

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Bill Simmons pens a great article on basketball’s most underappreciated all time great, Elgin Baylor.

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My favorite headline of the election season came from Reuters:
"McCain and Obama on Same Side in War on Cancer"

The political courage to take a position against cancer, now that’s change we can believe in!

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The generation gap on nuclear power: those 32 or over know how overblown anti-nuke rhetoric has been in the past and thus favor nuclear power plant construction, but those 18-31 have only the propaganda with which they’ve been bombarded all of their lives as a frame of reference and thus oppose it (but only by 38-35%).

Another example of why the left is so focused on control of academia, brainwashing takes better if begun earlier. An educated and open mind is a dangerous thing.

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Mark Steyn points out:

If Obama is elected in November, at G7 meetings, for the first time since they began, America will have a more left-wing leader than any other member of the group - Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Britain (and that's before Gordon Brown loses to David Cameron). Right-of-center government throughout the western world - except Washington.

And, if you say, "Hang on, isn't it the G8? What about Russia?", I'm not sure whether Putin and his stooge still regard themselves as socialists, but, if so, for good or ill, it's certainly of a more muscular variety than Obama's.

Strange times.

Indeed, and not in a good way here.

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22-Year-Old Auctions Off Virginity to Pay for College

If she hadn’t been saving herself for marriage, and is still a virgin at 22…buyer beware!

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Michael Barone makes the sensible argument that the current mood is amenable to more government intervention in the economy because there is now a whole generation of adults who do not remember what it was like the last time government tried to control things – the gas lines, unemployment and stagflation of the 1970s.

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NBA fans would do well to keep in mind Kelly Dwyer’s mantra: For every dumb contract move a player makes, NBA GMs will counter it with 14 dumber moves of their own.

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PMS: From a hilarious letter to the Washington Post editor from a Lisa Orenstein of Baltimore:

In a country with more than 300 million people, with plenty of accomplished men and women, why would we settle for Ms. Palin's mediocre credentials? Most companies would place her résumé in the reject pile for far lesser jobs.

Yes, because nothing gets a resume rejected faster than experience as a mayor, state cabinet member and governor.

Can you imagine how quickly Ms. Orenstein would have discarded a Bill Clinton résumé in 1992?

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6 Comments:

At 10/14/2008 3:52 PM, Blogger Tess (Gina) said...

Hey dude. I didn't know anybody else used this place...

 
At 10/14/2008 5:04 PM, Blogger Gary Collard said...

Tons of bloggers like me, unprolific and with small readership, use blogger.com. It's the more serious types that use WordPress and such, but I don't have time or inclination to blog enough to need that.

Not sure if your own Sex Kitten Room is still active or not, but I'll plug you anyway :)

 
At 5/13/2009 5:01 PM, Anonymous Nicolas Krebs said...

"If Obama is elected in November, at G7 meetings, for the first time since they began, America will have a more left-wing leader than any other member of the group - Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, and Britain"

Mark Steyn is wrong, as usual. At least prime minister of Germany, France, Britain, Spain are more left than Obama.

 
At 5/14/2009 1:50 PM, Blogger Gary Collard said...

You can at least make a case in the case of Spain.

But Sarkozy and Merkel? Seriously?

Given what we've seen so far, Steyn's pre-election words look pretty prescient, but it's still early. Let's see if the massive transfer of power from the people to the government continues unchecked before making the call here.

 
At 6/06/2009 4:47 PM, Anonymous Nicolas Krebs said...

"You can at least make a case in the case of Spain.

But Sarkozy and Merkel? Seriously?" Gary Collard

Seriously. There is freedom of association for workers into labor organizations and generalized public health insurance in France and in Germany, and AFAIK Sarkozy or Merkel do not want to change this, altought Barak Obama has only a generalized public health insurance system for children in USA in his schedule and did not said he would support freedom of association for workers into labor organizations.

 
At 6/07/2009 12:00 PM, Blogger Gary Collard said...

There is full freedom of association for workers, or anybody else for that matter, into labor or any other form of organizations, in the US. Has been since 1791, via the First Amendment to the Constitution:

Congress shall make no law [...] prohibiting [...] or abridging [...] the right of the people peaceably to assemble.

I'm not sure if you are unaware that or have been led to believe otherwise, but the notion that there is no (or even some limit) of freedom of association for workers into labor organizations is patently false and frankly absurd.

You are correct that we still have health care freedom and have not implemented any rationing scheme as is present in most of Europe, although as you doubtless know Obama is feverishly working to implement such a system.

So what you seem to be claiming is, if there exists one issue on which Obama, while being left of the other G7 members in theory, has not yet managed to push his position through the political process in practice, then he is not left of them overall.

Sounds like a straw man to me.

 

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