Newt Gingrich attracted a fair amount of ridicule when he proposed that the United States embark upon a program to establish a permanent base on the Moon. How they laughed at the candidate’s cluelessness! Though to tell you the truth I thought that Gingrich had an excellent idea there (I’ve read my Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein, etc.) I, too, cracked a rueful smile. A presidential campaign in a time of economic hardship is no place for soaring visions. Gingrich ought to have known a bunch of media “fact checkers” would rush to add up the costs of a lunar colony and debunk its claimed benefits.

Ah, but there’s one law for Newt but quite a different one for Barry! When the Prez promoted pond scum as the cure for America’s energy woes, the fact checkers must have been out to lunch…

Posted by tmg110 at 4:33 PM EST

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Interesting article this. It reflects my long-held opinion that Barack Obama’s political skills have been wildly exaggerated by the media, by his supporter and most of all by the man himself. Matthew Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon, writes: “The sound and fury of the Republican primary has distracted political observers from one of the most interesting political developments of the cycle thus far: President Obama’s reelection campaign is a pallid imitation of his 2008 juggernaut.”

How true! Those who’ve been paying close attention to Team Obama’s early moves in the 2012 campaign have been struck above all by the campaign’s negativity, empty rhetoric and general lack of focus. Two things are becoming clear: (1) In the first three years of his presidency, Obama recklessly squandered an enormous fund of good will, and (2) neither Obama nor his senior advisers has the slightest idea what to do now.

The signs of cluelessness are abundant. The President’s suggestion yesterday, in the context of a discussion about gas prices, that fuel derived from algae could supply 17% of America’s fuel needs, was just pathetic. “You’ve got a bunch of algae out here, right?” Obama declaimed during a campaign event in Florida. “If we can figure out how to make energy out of that, we’ll be doing all right.” Good grief! Could he possibly be more disconnected from the daily concerns of average Americans, for whom the rising price of gas is an immediate and serious issue?

A guy who would actually say something like that at a time like this may not be all that hard to beat.

Posted by tmg110 at 1:19 PM EST

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Writing in the Weekly Standard, Robert Kimball wonders if there will ever be another Great American Novel. His answer, more or less, is no.

Most of the supposedly serious literary novels being published today, Kimball opines, simply aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. Of course, as he goes on to note, this situation is nothing new. Of the countless thousands of American novels published in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries how many are remembered, much less read, today? Competent journeymen and plain old hacks always outnumber writers of genius. And certainly today there are some fine American writers at work.

But not even the finest contemporary writer is likely to produce a Great American Novel. Kimball suggests, and I agree with him, that thanks to the atomization of American culture, that’s now a practical impossibility. Without a common culture, without a common vocabulary if you will, how can there be such a thing as a characteristically American novel?  For progressives who revile American exceptionalism, the very idea of a Great American Novel must seem quaint if not subversives. And progressives dominate what passes nowadays for literary culture.

In place of American exceptionalism we have multiculturalism, a doctrine whose practical effect has been to promote group identification: female, gay, black, Hispanic, even white. The designation “American” is tacked on almost as an afterthought. No wonder that genre fiction—romance, SF, mysteries, vampires, etc.—with its mutually exclusive fan bases is flourishing, while literary fiction languishes on life support.

Posted by tmg110 at 12:53 PM EST

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The push to legalize same-sex marriage is presented by its proponents as a major civil rights issue. But in fact, it’s no more than a sad symptom of the demise of marriage itself. Gay marriage is thinkable today precisely because so many people no longer think much of marriage.

The New York Times published a story over the weekend that described out-of-wedlock births as “the new normal.” The Times noted that more than half of all births to American women under the age of 30 occur outside of marriage. Among all American women of childbearing age, only 59% of births occur within marriage. Despite ample evidence of the harm done to children by illegitimacy—higher rates of  poverty, criminality and emotional problems—few people are willing to stand up and say that bringing a child into this world outside of marriage is wrong. We mustn’t be judgmental, you know!

Those who defend the plague of illegitimacy typically rely on the language of “rights”: reproductive rights, marriage rights, civil rights, etc. But inevitably, all such defenses lead back to the denigration of marriage. For if there’s nothing wrong with unwed motherhood, then there’s no reason to give special consideration to the sacrament of matrimony. Indeed, to do so would constitute a tacit criticism of all those single moms. And we can’t have that!

So if gays think that the legalization of same-sex marriage will do anything to legitimize their relationships, they’re simply deceiving themselves. Legitimacy? That concept went out the window a long time ago.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:28 AM EST

Updated: Tuesday, 21 February 2012 11:31 AM EST

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Here we go again! Another progressive pundit sings the praises of that paragon of rational government, the Chinese Communist regime. This time it’s Eugene Robinson, who can’t contain his admiration for China’s despotic master class. Vice President Xi Jinping, widely expected to become China’s next leader, was in Washington the other day, and Robinson attended a luncheon in his honor. The columnist could hardly contain his hero worship. After reciting some details of Xi’s bio, he went on to say:

I recount this history because it helps me understand why the men—and a few women—now running China are the way they are: impatient to make up for lost time, pathologically wary of the slightest instability, tough, resourceful, adaptable, coldly unsentimental and, as [former Secretary of State Henry] Kissinger generalized in his introduction, convinced “that every solution is the beginning of a new set of problems.”

Uh-huh. And of course, this unsentimental pragmatism is in sharp contrast to the fecklessness of America’s political leaders: “What we’re not hearing [in this election year] is a serious debate about farsighted reforms that are needed to keep the United States from falling behind.”

Robinson’s subtext isn’t hard to discern: one-party authoritarian China good; messy democratic America bad. And the assumption underlying his lament: the more-than-dubious proposition that a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats—Chinese or American—possess the requisite knowledge and wisdom to summon the future.

I have no doubt that if Barack Obama were to propose a Five-Year Plan, Eugene Robinson would simply swoon.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:59 AM EST

Updated: Monday, 20 February 2012 11:34 AM EST

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Ha! This story from North Carolina is so typical of the state of affairs in Obama’s America:

North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler’s homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter.

Oh, there was a misunderstanding, all right: Some officious nosebleed from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education felt entitled to usurp the authority of parents who’d taken the time and trouble to provide their kids with lunch. And since when have the contents of little David or Suzie’s brown lunch bag been any business of the government’s? Since January 20, 2009, that’s when…

Posted by tmg110 at 2:39 PM EST

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After piously citing concern for innocent civilian lives as a justification for intervention in the Libyan civil war, Barack Obama finds himself confronted with a very similar—arguably worse—situation in Syria. And what’s he doing about it? Nothing.

The popular uprising against Syria’s despotic government seems on its face to present the United States with a veritable smorgasbord of golden opportunities. Supporting the armed Syrian opposition would not only remove one of the region’s most murderous governments but also strike a blow at the Syrian dictatorship’s chief ally, Iran. Together with Bashar al-Assad’s unsavory regime, Iran sponsors Hezbollah, the Lebanon-based terrorist group through which the Islamic Republic projects power and influence. The demise of Assad means, therefore the weakening of Hezbollah and hence of Iran.

But where Iran is concerned, Obama can always be relied upon to display the backbone of a chocolate éclair. He knows that effective action on Syria would annoy the ayatollahs. So instead of strident calls for intervention to prevent the all-too-real slaughter of innocents, the President opines that the conflict in Syria can be resolved without military intervention. He says this despite the fact that Russia and China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that backed an Arab League plan to pressure Assad to accept a peaceful transition of power. (So much, incidentally, for Secretary of State Clinton’s much-ballyhooed “reset” of relations with Putin’s Russia!)

The UN fiasco left Obama with no viable policy on Syria—so I guess all those endangered innocents are just out of luck. And when we do go to war against Iran—an ever-more-likely possibility in my opinion—it will be without the many advantages of the indirect approach. What a doofus.

Posted by tmg110 at 2:21 PM EST

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Remember how Democrats and the media used to blame George W. Bush and his sinister cabal of neocon puppet masters for high gas prices? Well, now that Barack Obama is president, Dems and reporters have suddenly discovered that the causes of high gas prices are mysterious and quite complex! Take this story from the February 28, 2011Washington Post and this one from the February 17, 2012 Los Angeles Times, neither of which mention the Obama Administration at all.

It’s true, of course, that a complex of factors—Middle East unrest, rising demand, even the weather—is driving prices higher. This is as true today as it was when Dems and the media were squawking at the Bush Administration. But it’s also true that the anti-petroleum decisions of the Obama Administration are helping to keep prices high. North America is sitting on vast untapped oil and natural gas reserves that could have a significant effect on prices—if they were being exploited. (And, incidentally, exploiting those resources would create jobs.) But instead Barry and his minions hand out subsidies and loan guarantees to insolvent solar panel manufacturers, electric cars that no one wants to buy and useless high-speed rail projects.

When gas reaches a price of $5 per gallon for regular unleaded, remember that.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:10 AM EST

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That leading indicator of political trends, Bob Shrum, has opined on the dispute between the Obama Administration and the Catholic Church:

[I]n this pluralistic society, the prelates of one denomination are attempting to impose their strictures on everyone of every faith and none. This echoes the failed efforts of the Catholic hierarchy to prevent the legalization of divorce in Italy—and worldwide, their graceless enmity toward civil marriage for same-sex couples. It's hard to escape the sense that if they could get away with it, they would remake America in their own dogmatic image and likeness. Where logically do you draw the line? If the remarriage of those who are divorced is morally wrong—a lapse into "living in sin"—why not outlaw it?

Now there’s no doubt that Shrum’s crude and offensive diatribe echoes the views of the secular progressives who constitute the Democratic Party’s base. Despite the fact that most Catholic social teaching betrays a decidedly liberal bias, the Church gets no credit for this from the Shrums of the world. Unless and until the Catholic Church abandons its pro-life teachings and embraces that secular sacrament, abortion, it will always be reviled on the Left.

Shrum’s words well reflect the hatred with which the Church is viewed by secular progressives, e.g. his false and lying claim that the Catholic bishops “are attempting to impose their strictures on everyone of every faith and none.” In fact, the Church has neither the power nor the inclination to prevent people from obtaining contraception or even abortions. Its pro-life campaign relies on moral suasion, not coercion—in sharp contrast, incidentally, to the policies of the Obama Administration.

Shrum’s attack on the Catholic Church demonstrates the essential fraudulence of the progressive claim that universal access to free contraception is a civil rights issue. Once again, he has come through for us: Just listen to what Bob has to say and you can be sure that the converse is the case.

Posted by tmg110 at 11:37 AM EST

Updated: Saturday, 18 February 2012 10:21 AM EST

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Maybe Rep. Maxine Waters isn’t simply a shrill, offensive shrew with the soul of a Bolshevik apparatchik. It could be that the poor woman is messed up in the head. Her recent tirade against House Republicans, in the course of which she characterized Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor as “demons,” certainly calls her emotional and mental stability into question.

Why her own party permits her to get away with this is an easy question to answer. Waters is (a) black, (b) a woman and (c) a progressive. So no matter how crazily she talks, Maxine gets a pass from the Dems and their pals in the media. Can you imagine the uproar that would follow a comment from, say, Newt Gingrich, to the effect that Barack Obama is the spawn of Satan…?

Posted by tmg110 at 10:48 AM EST

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