Quick hits 12/15

Some short notes, links and thoughts:

John Hinderaker repeats what I have been stressing: “Having the far left in control of both the executive and legislative branches is a terrible thing, but on the plus side, it is clarifying: people actually have to think about where they stand on the big issue of freedom vs. socialism. Or, in other words, freedom vs. slavery.”

John Edwards: not only a sleazebag, but a common criminal.

Some who live on confiscated money hypocritically do not allow their own to be confiscated.

Ann Althouse: “The strategy for avoiding the label ‘death panel’ is: present the treatments as deadly. Voila: life panels! Now, here’s your blue pill.”

Al Gore busted lying...again.

Big Hollywood: “What’s the Difference Between the Mafia and a Hollywood Leftist? …the Mafia doesn’t go after your family.”

Incompetence update: more uninvited guests get to Obama. This is scary, at some point they won’t be quite so friendly if this continues.

Worst restaurant names ever

Calling Obama a socialist seems a bit overheated, but it does hold up to scrutiny; this is a president who has sought to restructure about 35% of the economy from the top down: health care (17% of GDP), energy (9.8%), and financial services (8%). Socialism is a Utopian fantasy of the academic class, and most of his administration is staffed with academics, so this is not exactly a surprising development.

Always remember: If you don't know who the mark is, you are the mark.

How cool is this?

Stem cell fact: Restrictions on embryonic stem cell research originated with Congress, which, each year since in 1996, has forbidden the use of federal financing for any experiment in which a human embryo is destroyed. What, you thought it was George W. Bush?

Charles Krauthammer:

Forget for a moment the economic effects of severe carbon chastity. There’s the matter of constitutional decency. If you want to revolutionize society — as will drastic carbon regulation and taxation in an energy economy that is 85 percent carbon-based — you do it through Congress reflecting popular will. Not by administrative fiat of EPA bureaucrats.

Congress should not just resist this executive overreaching, but trump it: Amend existing clean-air laws and restore their original intent by excluding CO2 from EPA control and reserving that power for Congress and future legislation.

Do it now. Do it soon. Because Big Brother isn’t lurking in CIA cloak. He’s knocking on your door, smiling under an EPA cap.

Gaming the CBO numbers.

It didn’t take long for people to long for the competence of the second Bush administration, did it?

Martin Kramer makes the superb point that there is really no difference between Bush’s infamous “Bring ‘em on” challenge and Obama’s America deprecation in that each is “effectively an open invitation to America’s adversaries, and even its allies, to elude, evade, defy and confront the United States”.

He also correctly notes that “Middle Eastern states bend in response to displays of power, although as soon as they perceive weakness, they snap back to default position.”