Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

By

The new year’s must-reads!

Adam Bellow’s bringing new titles to Harper Collins, each under $3.00:

Adam Bellow hopes to give voice to the tea party with new conservative imprint at HarperCollins

Bellow, 54, is editorial director of Broadside Books, HarperCollins’s conservative imprint, launched a year ago. Its mission, he says, is to “attack the intellectual roots of liberalism, and find and publish a lot of new thinking on the right.”

And it shouldn’t be hard, the New Yorker contends over coffee at the Metro Diner, a working person’s eatery at 100th and Broadway that is a favorite haunt. “There is zero fresh air coming from the left,” he says. “There is more genuine intellectual ferment on the right. Conservatives are better educated, if only to know what the left is saying and how to defend themselves.”

Click on the above links, buy them all, and read them today in your e-reader.

I already have them in my Kindle. Did I mention that I love my Kindle?

(h/t Instapundit)

UPDATE,
Linked by The Other McCain. Thanks!
(Added Kindlel links for your convenience!)

28402
Share

By

Greyhound One roundup

President Obama’s riding through on a large bus that cost over $1 million, but but he’s not sleeping in the bus,

Though the excursion is packaged with humble appeal,

Humble is in the eye of the beholder

it looks like nobody’s sleeping on the bus. The White House has reserved the entire historic Hotel Winneshiek in Decorah, Iowa, and 60 rooms at nearby Luther College, and that’s just one stop on the tour.

Those of you concerned about carbon footprints should take a look at the motorcade,

Yet, the President finds it appropriate to tell auto companies that “You can’t just make money on SUVs and trucks”. So far it looks like you can’t make money on the Chevy Volt. Instead, you should go into the custom-bus business, even if the bus looks more like a police mortuary van than a symbol of hope arriving on your street.

Then there is the issue of unscripted, unexpected encounters,

Obama says the tanking economy is not his fault; the Japan tsunami, the Arab Spring, the Europeans‘ debt crisis, all have added to his streak of bad luck.

Not what one expects for a campaign tour, is it?

By now, even Chris Matthews is saying that the bus tour doesn’t seem to be the right move right now, adding the ultimate insult, “something Pawlenty would have done.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Obama did say he’ll have a plan to create jobs “when Congress comes back in September.”

Maybe.

But not to worry, Obama continues to “make no apologies for being reasonable” (h/t Instapundit), or unprepared, for that matter, since the unanswered question remains, how does a campaign bus tour create jobs?

In the meantime, Greyhound One rolls right along, at taxpayers’ expense.

Post edited for clarity.

27122
Share

By

Compare and contrast:

Obama:

“We’ve always been, and always will be, a AAA country”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Compare and contrast that speech with what a guy on the floor of the exchange has to say:

Santelli:

“We would have been rated BBB!”

Who do you believe?

As of the writing of this post, the Dow is down 106 points, after Friday’s and Monday’s precipitous fall.

Indeed, this is A crisis of confidence in economy — and Obama

The stock market, already falling before Obama spoke, saw selling accelerate as Obama made it clear he had no new ideas to offer. And he certainly gave no hint that he’s ready to adopt Republican ideas such as cutting business taxes or slashing regulation. Instead of a pivot, Obama stayed firmly planted in the anti-growth policies of the past two-and-a-half years. He’s even keeping Tim Geithner as Treasury secretary, practically begging the poor guy to stay. (Indeed, it was almost exactly a year ago that Geithner penned his “Welcome to the Recovery” op-ed.)

Americans have seen this movie before.

And the movie is on a continuous-repeat loop.

27073
Share

By

The Democrat Amateur Psychology Hour

The Tea Partiers must be doing something right that the Dems are all aflutter and resorting to that refuge of scoundrels, pop psychology.

First we have Howard Dean.

I can hear him scream,

Howard thinks the Tea Party is “the last gasp of the 55-year-old generation.” Since Howard was born in 1948, either he’s feeling a little left out of the Party, or he’s deploring the actions of the young ones.

Then there’s Steny Hoyer, who was born in 1939, which leaves him out of the “55-year-old generation”. Steny’s saying Tea Party people come from unhappy families. In a blinding show of logic, he stated,

There are a whole lot of people in the Tea Party that I see in these polls who don’t want any compromise. My presumption is they have unhappy families. All of you have been in families: single-parent, two-parents, whatever. Multiple parent and a stepfather. The fact is life is about trying to reach accommodation with one another so we can move forward. That is certainly what democracy is about. So if we are going to move forward compromise is necessary.

You got to love all that talk about “accommodation with each other” from the same politicians who locked the Republicans out of the rooms where 1,000-pages long bills that would involve the spending of trillions of dollars were being drafted. Maybe that’s what Steny means by, “That is certainly what democracy is about.”

Whatever.

Dymphna wants to know,

I wonder if he’d care to give us some psychological understanding of a few of the questionable people his party hangs with. We could begin with ACORN, that happy troupe of good scouts just out to help humanity while they help themselves to a sinecure.

To Steny, like to Tolstoy, Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is at the Tea Party.

24617
Share

By

Christine O’Donnell: “I’m not a witch!”

The Note:

“I’m not a witch,” Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell assures voters, who may be concerned that she once “dabbled” in the dark arts, in a new ad released by her campaign on Monday.

“I’m nothing you’ve heard,” O’Donnell continues in the 30-second spot — the first of the general election — “I’m you.”
…
“None of us are perfect, but none of us can be happy with what we see all around us,” she says. “Politicians who think spending, trading favors and back-room deals are the ways to stay in office. I’ll go to Washington and do what you’d do.”

Mr Bingley has A Song for Delaware. Sing it, Bingley!

23390
Share

By

Spendthrift Nanny

David Warren writes about the European Union’s bankrupt states:
The Nanny State Has Blown the Bank

The Nanny State has blown the bank. She, or it, has done so everywhere. Even after appropriating half of every national income with taxes both direct and indirect, and after offloading the costs of cumbersome do-good schemes onto businesses through convoluted regulations, Nanny is reduced to printing money.

From the liquidators’ point of view, however, the problem is rather more complicated: the debtors are more hostile than the creditors. Thanks to democracy, and the power of “the people,” under the inspiration of demagogues, to appropriate each other’s wealth, there seems no chance of a smooth disposition.

Our debts have been rephrased as “entitlements.” They are the fiscal dimension of “human rights.” Everyone has a “right” to a pension, and to much else besides, regardless of whether he put his share into the piggy; or whether Nanny absconded with what he did put in.

Those who prudently saved against the contingencies of this world, have subtly numbered themselves among “the rich.” And, “tax the rich” is the received solution. For generations now, “progressive” politicians, imposing “progressive” tax systems, have been making an example of the prudent. The cultivation and manipulation of envy is at the heart of all political schemes for income redistribution, and parties of the Left have been building their client base upon it.

Hence the gradual division of every electorate between the Party of Entitlement, and the Party of Tax Cuts: the one to increase spending, the other to limit revenue, until the gap between income and expenditure has grown to oceanic proportions. In a pinch, the government pulls both ways at once, as poor hapless Obama is now doing because his Party of Entitlement is about to be mooshed in the U.S. midterm elections. In addition to more ruinous “stimulus” spending, he is now promising tax cuts (for everyone but “the rich”).

There, as here, the chariot of state is driving over the cliff.

Warren wonders if the Tea Partiers in the USA will be able to stop the trend here.

However, the only solution is

That measure is, quite frankly, the complete dismantlement of the Nanny State, and the restoration of the status quo ante — governments focused on the provision of national defence, and domestically on the machinery of law and order. Full stop.

We’ll find out soon enough.

Hat tip: Adam.

22946
Share

By

Andrew Sullivan not in the Journolist?

Gay Patriot asks,
Is Andrew Sullivan Too Crazy For Even The Vast Left Wing ‘JournoList’ Gang?

Who knows? maybe Sullivan’s uterus fixation is a little too much?

Check out the YouTube in Gay Patriot’s post, too,

Now transfer the stats in the video to comparable coverage of the Tea Parties, and how many times the Tea Partiers are accused of racism.

Journolist: The gift that keeps on giving!

21884
Share