The first, from Mother Jones: Late on Thursday night, an effort to rein in the mega-banks that brought the American economy to the brink of disaster died on the Senate floor. Sens. Ted Kaufman (D-Del.) and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) had offered an amendment that would have broken up the biggest banks and forced them to …
American Exceptionalism Thrives in the Obama Administration: It Refuses Foreign Help on BP Oil Spill
Which says they're too proud for their own good: When State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley refused to tell reporters which countries have offered assistance to help respond to the BP oil spill, the State Department press corps was flabbergasted. "As a policy matter, we're not going to identify those offers of assistance until we are …
Robert Gibbs: When Conspiracy Theories Are Easier to Take Than the Truth
That's one way to deflect the sorry reality of the situation: "I would not be surprised if the White House said, you know, we might be able to, guess what, do what? Use this crisis to our advantage. Let this crisis get really bad, and then we will step in," Brown told Neil Cavuto. "We …
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If the Cricket Team Wears Green, It Must Be an Islamic State
As the Qur'an would say, it's a clear sign: Pakistan was carved out of the Muslim-majority areas of British India in 1947, the world's first modern nation based solely on Islam. The country's name means "Land of the Pure." The capital city is Islamabad. The national flag carries the Islamic crescent and star. The cricket …
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Millions of Dead Fish
I've documented on this blog and related ones some of the "interesting" business trips I have taken, especially outside the US. One of those took place in 1980, when my brother and I, fresh from an offshore technology exhibit at Earl's Court, took a plane to Hamburg to meet with a prospective German representative for …
It Is Gordon Brown's "Joe the Plumber Moment," Only Worse
Janet Daley at the Telegraph is right about this: What Gordon Brown did was to insult a quintessential Labour supporter for expressing opinions that are probably held by three quarters of the white working class core vote. That is a whole different ballgame – and its consequences are likely to be irreversible. It's one thing to insult …
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Homosexuals and Paedophiles Not in League? Back in the Old Days…
...things were different, as Le Salon Beige reminds us, in this quote which appeared in a French gay magazine in 2001: In France, homosexuality comes from a pedophile culture with André Gide. In 1968, there was even a pederast revolutionary action committee. In the speech of GLH at the start of 1975, there is a …
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Rubio and Crist: The Reality of the Retirement Age in Social Security
Now we have the spectacle of Repbulicans battling it out over Social Security, in Florida of all places: Marco Rubio appeared on a Sunday talk show this month to say something remarkable. The Republican running for Florida's Senate seat suggested we reform Social Security by raising the retirement age for younger workers. Florida is home …
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Environmentalism: You Think the New Atheists Will Take On This New Religion?
Environmentalism is certainly a new religion: America's leading environmental historian, William Cronon of the University of Wisconsin, calls environmentalism a new religion because it offers "a complex series of moral imperatives for ethical action, and judges human conduct accordingly." In other words, issues such as climate change are now much more than about "science." And …
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He'd Better Bow to China
As usual, a big deal is made of this: But this is simply the obeisance that any hopeless debtor would give its largest creditor. It reminds me of a quip by a local county commissioner: if you walk into a bank as a large depositor, they tell you "yes, sir" or "yes, m'am," but if …
Positive Infinity 