Bookworm Room

Clark S. Judge sent to Hugh Hewitt a great note analyzing what Obama really said during the SOTU.  I’m going to do something here that I almost never do, which is to reprint the note in its entirety at my own blog, albeit reformatted from the original.  Why?  Because the paragraph breaks vanished at Hugh [...]

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We can expect tomorrow night’s State of the Union address to be an action-packed hour (or so) of vitriol and self-pity.  Obama will cherry-pick a few numbers about the 1% and then whine about how he’s been trying really hard to destroy that same 1%, but that a vast array of insurmountable obstacles — Congress, [...]

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Does history repeat itself? I fervently hope not. Ok, I have grudgingly thrown my support behind Mitt Romney. It’s not that I am excited about Romney as a candidate, but I am genuinely excited about the need to get Obama out of office before he does irreversible damage to this country. But, here is where [...]

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Andy Stern, who led the SEIU to its current status as a statist political powerhouse, has a lengthy op-ed in the Wall Street Journal today, touting the wonders of China’s economic model.  His basic point:  China’s recent economic surge shows that government should control the economy.  To support this premise, he points, not to China’s [...]

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Oh dear, it appears the CBO has turned a tad pessimistic about its earlier prognostications on the economy, stimulus and ObamaCare, heralded as dogma and chiseled in stone tablets on the alters of the Left’s Temple of Orthodoxy.   Drinks all around for the Bookworm Room denizens that correctly anticipated the outcomes cited herein. It [...]

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Given this blog’s recent flogging of the China versus U.S. (“us”) question, here is  a primary example of how China may surpass the U.S. by becoming more business friendly as it decentralizes while the U.S. risks having to learn the lessons of socialist history all over again as our over-regulated economy grinds down to a [...]

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Is our democracy germinating the seeds of its own destruction? Alexis de Toqueville warned, “The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.” That day has come. It is not yet gone. Democracy  in ancient Athens lasted about 250 years. We in the United [...]

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San Francisco is definitely up in the top five when it comes to “most Progressively governed cities in America.”  No surprise, then, that the city’s finances are in a shambles.  What is a surprise is the fact that, faced with a looming budget collapse, the City has suddenly discovered capitalist incentives:  it’s offering the big [...]

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One of my all-time favorite economic historians is Harvard’s Niall Ferguson, who does a very good job dissecting the transatlantic political and economic cultures with characteristic British clarity in erudition. He’s not perfect, however: witness his bad judgment in affixing his name to a worn-out political rag like Newsweek. But, I digress… In this nonetheless excellent [...]

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There’s an excellent article in the WSJ about the challenges that retiring baby boomers face as 401(k)s fail to meet their retirement needs. I don’t know if this can be accessed without an online subscription to the WSJ, so to summarize…buffeted by two major stock market crashes, most baby boomers on the cusp of retirement [...]

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I attended a family gathering not long ago, liberally populated with Liberal in-laws,  in which the mood was decidedly sour. Discussions revolved around the poor job market, employment uncertainty and health insurance. In conversations, a lot of resentment was directed at corporations, CEOs and their “disgusting and greedy” profits, salaries, benefits and bonuses. I understand [...]

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I was at my church this past weekend and was struck by the large number of college-graduate children that are now back living at home with their parents, out of work. The impression I have is that many of these kids still have no idea what they want to do with their lives. I get [...]

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Democrats are the friends of big business, Conservatives are the friends of small business. Democrat government inevitably ratchets its way to corruptocracy. If you don’t agree with this, can we at least agree that Democrats favor highly regulated economies and societies and conservatives don’t? Let me explain with two examples. 1) The Wall Street Journal [...]

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As we settle into the Obama Depression era, one thing that I and others have noticed is that many of the very youth that voted enthusiastically for Obama are the ones already feeling the consequence of his policies: they are unemployed. As one of my college-age kids put it, “our generation is so over Obama, [...]

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Incredibly, from the U.K.’s left-wing Guardian, comes a photo essay of what happens when Democrats are given the opportunity to put their economic and political theories to work: welcome to the future…. http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/gallery/2011/jan/02/photography-detroit?/%3Fpicture=370173060&index=15#/?picture=370173054&index=0 h/t smalldeadanimals.com

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The U.S. is already bankrupt

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Bookworm recently asked, “is Europe trying to save itself?” To that question, I can only offer anecdotal evidence from family and business visits made to France and Belgium this summer, shortly after the Greece-precipitated financial crisis. Europe (witness the EU) is an uber-bureacracy. For centuries, Europe’s forms of governance have devolved into top-down, centralized governments [...]

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One of the things that I try to understand is the Great Divide between today’s Liberals and conservatives that has left us talking past one another on policy issues. Frankly, I have concluded that discussion with Liberals is often futile because we attribute different meanings to words and concepts. One of those concepts, I suspect, [...]

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In a time of economic uncertainty, which is not helped by runaway government spending, you might be surprised (happily or otherwise) to learn where your Senator or House member stands when it comes to pro-growth policies.  I was not at all surprised to learn that my representatives — Woolsey, Boxer and Feinstein — are busy [...]

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There were so many things wrong with Obama’s speech last night, whether because of dumb ideas, lies, vicious attacks against Constitutional guardians, etc., that criticism actually becomes difficult.  It’s kind of like punching Jello, because you just get sucked in.  Nevertheless, it is important to criticize, not just Obama’s untruths, but the fundamental flaws in [...]

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Preparing and eating dinner took precedence of the President’s first State of the Union speech, so I didn’t watch it in real time.  Indeed, because I find Obama’s presentation dull (he has the cadences of a slightly defective metronome), I haven’t listened to it at all, but I have read it.  I therefore felt that, [...]

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There is something deeply, deeply wrong with the Obami and the Congressional Democrats.  Or maybe not.  Maybe they are just all too human and are living out that saying that “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”  In this case, the corruption isn’t necessarily monetary (although that’s there too).  Instead, it’s a rot of the [...]

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The jobs summit is at an end and Obama has given lip service to the private sector.  He doesn’t really mean it, though.  How can he, when he makes statements such as this one: Mr. Obama said he would entertain “every demonstrably good idea” for creating jobs, but he cautioned that “our resources are limited.” [...]

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A message from William Kristol, one that I’ve already put into effect as to my own Senators (much good it will do, of course, as they’re Feinstein and Boxer): I gather Rasmussen will report today that its latest survey shows support for the Congressional health reform legislation falling to a new low — 38 percent [...]

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Jennifer Rubin has two posts this morning, both of which illustrate my point about the dangerous relationship between our CIC and the military he’s supposed to be leading.  In the first, she talks about the insane decision-making process in D.C., which seems to have little to do with either victory or troop safety: The White [...]

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