Re Ann Coulter:

If conservatives want her to be their public face, it's fine with me.

AND: I have no problem with more Joe the Plumber exposure.


posted by Quiddity at 1/07/2009 12:43:00 PM

Here's where Democrats piss me off:

In order to fund the S-CHIP program, Democrats will increase the tax on the "pariah class" of citizens who smoke cigarettes.

This will impact 45 million smokers and it's a tax that is very visible - noticed every time a (frequent) purchase is made. The tax is extremely regressive given the demographics of smokers and it isn't for smoking-related healh costs (which the current federal+state taxes already cover).

It's a pure moralist pose. And I don't like it.

Reminds me of a (failed) proposal by a California state legislator who wanted to increase taxes on beer and pornography. This taxing of the reprobrate is a coward's move. No guts to tax wealth (e.g. property) or income. Screw that.

How is Democrats targeting cigarette smokers for moral reasons any different than Republicans opposing gay-marriage for moral reasons?


posted by Quiddity at 1/07/2009 07:08:00 AM

A little over eight years ago:

John Bolton and John Yoo were in the thick of the Bush vs. Gore post-election fight. Yoo was on the news shows opining on what the Florida Supreme Court should do. Bolton was challenging chads.

Most people think of Boldon and Yoo as foreign-policy types and therefore, their op-ed in the New York Times is some sort of high-minded talk about proper inter-government relations. That's false. Bolton and Yoo only want to reduce Obama's freedom of action.


posted by Quiddity at 1/05/2009 09:55:00 PM

Consider the source:

In a Bloomberg story, Fed Officials Endorse ‘Big Stimulus’ to Battle U.S. Recession, we read: (emp add)

Federal Reserve officials, after taking the historic step of cutting the benchmark interest rate to as low as zero, are calling for greater government spending to help revive the U.S. economy.

San Francisco Fed President Janet Yellen said yesterday at an economics conference in San Francisco that “it’s worth pulling out all the stops” with an economic recovery package. Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, told the same gathering he believes a “big stimulus is appropriate.”

Janet Yellen is not anybody you'd want to pay attention to.

From this blog's June post from last year:

Ben Bernanke (via Calculated Risk): (emp add)

Although the severity of the financial stresses became apparent only in August, several longer-term developments served as prologue for the recent turmoil and helped bring us to the current situation.

The first of these was the U.S. housing boom, which began in the mid-1990s and picked up steam around 2000. Between 1996 and 2005, house prices nationwide increased about 90 percent. During the years from 2000 to 2005 alone, house prices increased by roughly 60 percent--far outstripping the increases in incomes and general prices ...

Janet Yelen of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco (in her October 2007 speech at the Omni hotel in Los Angeles, printed in the Winter 2007 edition of the Town Hall Journal - not affiliated with townhall.com): (emp add)

Here in California, the rise and fall of house prices has been a lot like the nation's, only more so. In 2004 and 2005, many homeowners gleeflully watched the meter tick up and up on their house values. I know I did.

Yellen was a cheerleader of the housing bubble. She should not be a Fed president. She should not be giving advice on financial policy. She should resign. (So should Bernanke, et al)


posted by Quiddity at 1/05/2009 12:01:00 AM

Cheney: "not impeached" = it's legal

From his appearance on Face the Nation this Sunday:

CHENEY: If you hark back in our history, you can look at Abraham Lincoln, who suspended the writ of habeas corpus in the middle of the Civil War.

SCHIEFFER: But nobody thinks that that was legal.

CHENEY: Well, no. Well, it certainly was, in the sense he wasn’t impeached.

ALSO: (emp add)

CHENEY: I think we’ve done some very good things over the course of the last eight years. Defending the country against further terrorist attacks like 9/11, I think, is a major accomplishment, for example.

posted by Quiddity at 1/04/2009 03:38:00 PM

Safe:

From page 2 of the White House's Highlights of Accomplishments and Results (of) The Administration of President George W. Bush 2001-2009 (15 meg pdf)



That optics of this (along with the section title) is horrible.

ALSO: From page 17:

When our Nation faced an unprecedented inancial crisis in September,the President called for an unprecedented response.He rallied Members of Congress to enact a $700 billion rescue plan to avert a global financial meltdown.

He was hardly a player. It was all Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke (and Congress).

From page 18:

After-tax per-capita income increased 12 ercent from 2000 o 2007.

That's almost certainly not inflation-adjusted.

Page 25 consists of only this picture:



Lurid.

Page 28:

The President worked to protect our forests.Forest Initiative. This initiative improved and protected more than 27 million acres of Federal forests and grasslands and helped protect communities from catastrophic fires.

In other words, if you chop down a lot of trees, there's a lower chance of a catastrophic fire.

Page 50:

Directed Unprecedented Preparations for a Smooth Presidential Transition
Led the most comprehensive and forward-leaning effort in modern history to facilitate a smooth and effective transition.

That last item is like a student padding a report by saying that the report was put in a binder.


posted by Quiddity at 1/04/2009 12:15:00 AM