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That's the President of the United States bowing—bowing!—to the King of Saudi Arabia. Apparently when I blogged concerning Obama's readiness to tongue-polish the wingtips and combat boots of the world's tyrants, that was no mere figure of speech. How perfectly shameful and disgusting.
Among other findings, the Obama Administration’s Auto Task Force noted in its report on GM (released Monday) that the company’s plug-in hybrid vehicle program is a waste of time and money. The melancholy fact of the matter is that GM’s much-touted Chevrolet Volt simply cannot be produced and sold at a profit.
So how did GM respond to this scathing assessment? Here you go:
GM asks U.S. gov't for $2.6 bln to build hybrids
And given the Obama Administration’s unreasoning green mania, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if GM got the money—excise me, our money.
Remember Thomas Malthus? It was he who predicted, back at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, that our planet’s ever-increasing population would eventually produce catastrophe in the form of resource depletion, famine, plague, and social collapse. His notorious treatise, An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798) was and remains extremely influential—despite the inconvenient fact that its main argument has been thoroughly falsified by two centuries of human history. (Quick, name one region of the world where an increasing population has led to a lower standard of living.)
But Malthus’ theory has its charms for prosperous, guilt-ridden, self-loathing Western progressives whose discontents manifest themselves as an unreasoning hatred of the civilization that nurtured them. Such people are naturally attracted to the idea that the human race in all its branches needs to be ruthlessly pruned.
Just the other day, one Jonathon Porritt, a “green adviser” to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, opined that in order to assure “sustainability,” the population of the United Kingdom must be cut to around 30 million. Since the present population of the UK is slightly in excess of 60 million, this presents a problem. Not that it would be absolutely impossible to reach Porritt’s goal. A good start could be made by slapping an absolute ban on immigration, since immigrants to the UK, who come mostly from the Third World, tend to have much larger families than native Britons. What else? A tax could be levied on families that produce excess children—say, more than two. Women choosing to terminate their pregnancies could be rewarded with cash bonuses. Suicide could be legalized—even subsidized via tax rebates for surviving family members. Medical care could be withheld from the elderly and the terminally ill. (But perhaps this last proposal is already in operation, given the scandalous inefficiency of Britain’s National Health Service.) Once you begin to speculate along these lines, many possibilities present themselves.
That such proposals are morally outrageous is an objection that the Porritts of the world have a habit of waving away. The important thing, you see, is to "save the planet." But given their manifest dislike of their own species, one wonders for whom or for what the Porritts are proposing to save it. The snail darter, perhaps?
Here’s a long-time favorite of mine, which is not only one of the funniest movies ever made, but required viewing for any dad with a daughter of marriageable age:
Father of the Bride (1950). Directed by Vincente Minnelli
Based on the novel of the same name by Edward Streeter, Father of the Bride is a sweet-tempered, frequently hilarious comedy of manners—the manners in this case being those of postwar upper-middle class America. When Stanley T. Banks (Spencer Tracy) learns that his daughter Kay (Elizabeth Taylor) plans to marry, little does he realize that life as he has known it is about to come to an end. Stanley’s introduction to the mysteries of the American wedding forms the plot of this movie; Tracy’s clenched-jaw performance supplies the laughs. And laughs there are in plenty as Stanley’s comfortable existence is upended by the demands of the impending mating ritual.
Tracy’s performance is nothing short of priceless. Somehow, without histrionics, without expression—indeed, with scarcely a twitch of the lip—he communicates the growing frustration and alarm of a man who finds himself being shoved to the side as his daughter, wife and a horde of strangers annex his home and castle for their mysterious purposes. Among my favorite scenes is the engagement party, during which Stanley finds himself trapped in the kitchen throughout. Conscripted to slake to the militant thirst of his guests, he misses the formal announcement of his daughter’s engagement. As we soon learn, this incident is an omen.
Besides Tracy and Taylor, the excellent cast includes Joan Bennett as Stanley’s wife and Don Taylor as his prospective son-in-law. And look for Billie Burke, so well remembered as Glenda the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz.
Father of the Bride was remade in 1995 with Steve Martin in the title role, and I must admit that he and the movie weren’t bad at all. But the great original is the one to watch first. Despite all the changes that time and fate have wrought on American society, this film speaks to the eternal verities—and it does so with a grace and humor that remain irresistible.
…but not for me. That seems to be the motto of the Obama Administration. We learned yesterday that yet another Obama nominee, Kansas governor and prospective Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, failed to pay some $7,900 in taxes and interest. Of course, it was just an honest accounting error. For as we are all well aware, no progressive on the planet would ever attempt to defraud the federal government. Progressives are in favor of taxes. Right?
And incidentally, don’t you think that “Human Services” is rather a sinister turn of phrase…?
Apparently there’s enough money available to the Obama Administration to do everything from auto industry bailouts to solar power subsidies—but not enough to provide the United States with an adequate defense in these times of global turmoil:
Senator: Expect painful cuts in Pentagon budget
No details of these cuts are available yet. (I predict that one of them will involve that bugbear of the Left, missile defense.) But if they’re going to be so very “painful,” Senator, then perhaps they’re equally ill advised.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 13% for the first quarter of 2009. That’s change that, unfortunately, we have no choice but to believe in. True, things were looking up a bit in March, but even a superhuman multi-tasker like Barack Obama can’t devote all his time to the demolition of the national economy…
Though not intentionally so, this article by Chris Seiple in the Christian Science Monitor is quite hilarious. And the first laugh line is right there in the title: "10 terms not to use with Muslims." Here's a sample:
"Assimilation." This word suggests that the minority Muslim groups in North America and Europe need to look like the majority, Christian culture. Integration, on the other hand, suggests that all views, majority and minority, deserve equal respect as long as each is willing to be civil with one another amid the public square of a shared society.
Yeah, whatever. Now I grant that Seiple's intentions are good, but his lecture betrays a certain arrogance. What is the subtext of his article? Simply that Muslims cannot possibly be expected to understand the nuances of Western culture and society. No, the intellectual and moral burdens of understanding fall exclusively on readers of the Christian Science Monitor. And perhaps he's right. For I can't really imagine a similar article in a Muslim newspaper titled "10 terms not to use with Christians."
We now have a pretty good idea about the main points of President Obama's plan for the US economy:
• Higher taxes
• Much higher government spending and deficits
• A doubling of the national debt
• Trade protectionism
Writing for the Weekly Standard, Matthew Continetti describes the likely effects of these policies: "[T]he only ways out of the fiscal hole Obama is digging are massive tax increases, defaults and devaluation, and inflation. If you think today's news is bad, just wait."
When you recall the promises that Candidate Obama made in 2008—in contrast to the profligate Bush, he would be a responsible steward of the public purse—his budget is almost comical in its blithe dismissal of economic realities. Anyone with eyes in his head must see that he's leading us over the edge of the cliff. I used to think that Barack Obama was a smart guy, but now I fear that his presidential tenure may turn out to be the most disastrous since that of James Buchanan.
The era of Detroit's Big Three has ended—not with a bang but with the leftie smirk of Barack Obama. Don't imagine that the feds are riding to the rescue of the auto industry. This is GM's death knell. As Larry Kudlow notes in an article for National Review Online:
[I]n President Obama’s speech on Monday…as well as in Treasury term sheets for GM and Chrysler, there are multiple references to “the next generation of clean cars,” to new CAFE-standard mileage increases, and to green power-train developments. All this is a big green climate-change priority for the new administration.
But the simple fact is, small, tinny, and expensive green cars just don’t work for consumers. And even if those cars are designed better, the cost structure of the carmakers will have to be brought down so far that UAW wages will be forced below those of the non-union shops in Detroit south (including Honda, Toyota, and other foreign carmakers who are now producing in the United States).
Thus GM (and any other US automaker that falls under the control of the Obama Administration) will cease to be a for-profit business and will become instead a the preserve of kooky greenshirt fanaticism. The folks at Honda, Toyota, etc., must be high-fiving one another.
