Well Said

More on the doctor that posted it here.

Our Business Now Is North

219 - 212

Time To Vote!

Quote Of The Day

"Democratic leaders should be asking themselves just how they have gotten to the point that their strategy is to amend a law that doesn’t exist yet by passing a bill without voting on it."
- Yuval Levin

Quote Of The Day

"No! Try not.

Do. Or do not!!

There is no try. ..."

- Yoda

Mark Steyn Is A Genius

Disexceptionalizing America [Mark Steyn]


Rich, James Bennett puts it very well. In my piece on American decline for NR a couple of issues back, I tried to emphasize something that I think U.S. conservatives are too complacent about — the impact of Big Government on free peoples:

American exceptionalism would have to be awfully exceptional to suffer a similar expansion of government and not witness, in enough of the populace, the same descent into dependency and fatalism. As Europe demonstrates, a determined state can change the character of a people in the space of a generation or two.

And not just Europe. John O'Sullivan once suggested the entire post-war history of Canada could be summed up in Monty Python's "Lumberjack Song": The eponymous lumberjack hymning the manly virtues of a rugged life "leaping from tree to tree . . . down the mighty rivers of British Columbia" in the preamble has morphed by the third verse into a transvestite in high heels, suspenders, and a bra. From Canada 1945 to Canada 2000 in nothing flat.

Or take Scotland. Most anywhere you go around the planet, from Hong Kong to Hudson's Bay, almost everything that works was created and developed by Scotsmen. Now the whole joint's a statist swamp where government spending accounts for 75 percent of the economy and the menfolk idle away their days on a diet of drugs and fried Mars Bars with a life expectancy in the less salubrious parts of Glasgow getting down to West African standards. They'll never make any contribution to the world again.

Or consider Geert Wilders's address at the House of Lords today, a Dutchman citing Churchill, the Mother of Parliaments, desperate victims of Nazi-ruled Europe listening on their radios for the BBC's famous "This is London . . ." To a significant percentage of the British people and to the entirety of their ruling elites, these are not inspirational evocations of their glorious inheritance but something between a lost language and prima facie evidence of why Wilders is so dangerous he needs to be put on trial.


Second Amendment types insist the same thing could never happen here, but they underestimate the transformative power of government at their peril . . .

1977 Victoria's Secret Catalog

Ahhhh..... 1977, the good old days!

Sculpture

Quote Of The Day

"I’ve been saying for months that the difference between America and Europe is that, when the global economy nosedived, everywhere from Iceland to Bulgaria mobs took to the streets and besieged Parliament demanding to know why government didn’t do more for them. This is the only country in the developed world where a mass movement took to the streets to say we can do just fine if you control-freak statists would just stay the hell out of our lives, and our pockets. You can shove your non-stimulating stimulus, your jobless jobs bill, and your multi-trillion-dollar porkathons."
- Mark Steyn

Trickery

This letter was published today at NRO. I sincerely hope that the President and the Congressional Democrats pass health care this way. An idiotic move of this dimension would be enough to bury the Democratic Party for decades, if not permanently.

If the Democrats resort to this tactic there will be hell to pay. Since they apparently don't think much of the Tea Party activities and marches or the town hall meetings, I wonder what they would think of citizens surrounding the Capital building with torches, rope and guns?

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

National Review Online has acquired a new letter soon to be sent out by the House GOP to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.):

February 12, 2010

Dear Mr. Leader and Madam Speaker:

As you know, we welcomed the President’s call for bipartisan health care talks. The American people have made it clear that they strongly oppose the comprehensive health care bills you have passed and want them shelved in favor of a step-by-step approach focused on lowering costs for families and small businesses.

Given the President’s statement that he is “open to any ideas” at the proposed summit, it is our responsibility as congressional leaders to see that the views of our Members and our constituents will be heard in good faith. The existence of any kind of backroom deal among the White House and Democratic Leaders would certainly make a mockery of the President’s stated desire to have a “bipartisan” and “transparent” dialogue on this issue.

To that end, we were taken aback by a report in the Tuesday, February 9 edition of Politico stating that President Obama “hopes to walk into the Feb. 25 summit with an agreement in hand between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on a final Democratic bill, so they can move ahead with a reform package after the sit-down.”

We were further taken aback by a report in CongressDaily later the same day in which an aide to the Speaker, appearing at the National Health Policy Conference, described the legislative “trick” Democratic Leadership intends to use to jam through a “pre-negotiated” health care bill. It has also been reported that other congressional aides present concurred with this assessment.

Additionally, the Christian Science Monitor reported today that special interest groups are calling for Democrats to finalize a deal in advance of the proposed summit.

To ensure we can move forward in good faith, we ask that you publicly disavow these reports and assure the American people that Democratic Leadership is not putting together any kind of backroom deal or plotting any kind of legislative trickery to pass it. Your response will help clarify whether Democratic Leadership is serious about genuine bipartisan negotiations and whether the proposed summit will be a truly open forum or merely an intramural exercise.

We appreciate your immediate response in this matter and look forward to further efforts to foster bipartisan cooperation.

Sincerely,

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH)

House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA)

House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (R-IN)

Kill Phil

Quote Of The Day

"I've said numerous times before, Quentin Tarantino is incredibly talented but unfortunately he also has the impulses of an abused ten-year-old boy left alone with a frog and a box of firecrackers."
- Scott Nehring

Quote Of The Day

WOLF BLITZER: Three statewide elections in three states Obama won, where Obama campaigned for the Democrat. All three won by Republicans. What message does this send?

Alex Castellanos: If you can’t hide in Massachusetts, you can’t hide anywhere.

H/T Instapundit

The Tide Begins To Turn

Democrat Martha Coakley has just conceded the Massachusetts senate race to Republican Scott Brown. After almost 47 years as "Teddy Kennedy's seat" a Republican now takes over in time to deny the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority and possibly stop the Obamacare monstrosity. How sweet the irony.

And now the fun really begins.

Our Amish Neighbors

I just saw a buckboard wagon drawn by two horses pass in front of our house. Of course it had two of our Amish neighbors on it. One of the many reasons we really enjoy living here...

The Wise Man Speaks

Krauthammer on Obamacare:

"At first, health-care reform was sustained politically by Obama's own popularity. But then gravity took hold, and Obamacare's profound unpopularity dragged him down with it. After 29 speeches and a fortune in squandered political capital, it still will not sell.

The health-care drive is the most important reason Obama has sunk to 46 percent. But this reflects something larger. In the end, what matters is not the persona but the agenda. In a country where politics is fought between the 40-yard lines, Obama has insisted on pushing hard for the 30. And the American people -- disorganized and unled but nonetheless agitated and mobilized -- have put up a stout defense somewhere just left of midfield.

Ideas matter. Legislative proposals matter. Slick campaigns and dazzling speeches can work for a while, but the magic always wears off.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge."

The Third & The Seventh

This is quite beautiful and completely computer generated.

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

H/T bOING bOING

Stupid Stickers

Don't you just hate this bumper sticker? I do. And here's an in-depth analysis of it's inherent stupidity.

Sabotage

I love this version of the song. Wait until the end.

From Cliff May at NRO:

A Bipartisan Proposal


Step (1): Return all Gitmo detainees to Yemen.

Step (2): Use Predator missiles to strike the baggage-claim area 20 minutes after they arrive.

Just an idea.