Sad but true:

Members of Congress have demanded that President Obama present concrete plans for dealing with the over 200 dangerous detainees currently held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facilities before Congress funds its dismantling.

Obama responded to those demands yesterday with an extended speech in which he described in fine detail the complex structure of the sentences he will use, and the deep thought process he will employ, when dealing with Guantanamo and other national security issues.

What ever happened to the whole idea of hating what a person says but fighting for their freedom to express it?

UNC graduate student Tyler Oakley, who had organized the protest, said he regretted the broken window but not silencing Tancredo. "He was not able to practice his hate speech," said Oakley. "You have to respect the right of people to assemble and collectively speak."

You either believe in free speech or you don't, Tyler. The sad fact is that this kid has set himself up as the thought police, and he's probably feeling morally superior to everyone else because of it, instead of ashamed. God save America.

David Thompson:

If someone is invited onto campus to discuss a controversial subject – say, illegal immigration – the most righteous response is not to refute that person’s arguments, which would entail some effort and minimal civility. Good lord, no, there’s no time for that. (And why run the risk of hearing new information - and worse, rethinking one’s own position?) Instead, simply ensure the guest cannot air any argument at all. Then there’s not much to refute. One can simply sloganeer triumphantly and, of course, paraphrase. Call what the speaker would have said “hate speech,” then no-one will be curious and people will stay clear.

There's a word for this, it's usually applied (erroneously) to people on the right, and supposedly it could never happen here. Again: God save America.

The nightmare of the Obama presidency rolls on with the government takeover of GM.

The rationale for keeping GM out of bankruptcy was two-fold: no available financing and the potential damage to consumer confidence. But the government is providing financing and is offering to guarantee warranties. So what is the excuse now?

It's all politics now.

Now that the Obama presidency is nearing the 60-day mark, it’s time to thank those fastidious scribes on the left and the right who worked so hard to warn us against Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, and the dire things that would surely occur if she ever got close to executive power.
How right they were to insist that she was unfit for high office. Let’s just imagine what she might have done:

As president, she might have caused the stock market to plunge over 2,000 points in the six weeks after she assumed office, left important posts in the Treasury unfilled for two months, been described by insiders as ‘overwhelmed’ by the office, and then gone on to diss the British Prime Minister on his first state visit, giving him, as one head of state to another, a set of DVDs plucked from the aisles of Wal Mart, a tasteful gift, even if they can’t be played on a TV in Britain. (Note, the Prime Minister, who is losing his eyesight, may even be blind in one eye).

As vice president, she might have told Katie Couric that when the stock market crashed in 1929, President Franklin D. Roosevelt went on TV to reassure a terrified nation. Or on her first trip abroad as Secretary of State, she might have, as the AP reported, “raised eyebrows on her first visit to Europe...when she mispronounced her “EU counterparts names and claimed U.S. democracy was older than Europe’s,” then gave the Russian minister a gag “reset” button, on which the word “reset” was translated incorrectly.

What a good thing that Palin, whom Christopher Buckley called “an embarrassment, and a dangerous one,” wasn’t in office to cause such debacles, and that we have Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and Hillary Clinton instead.

So much time explaining why sending Obama to the Oval Office was a terrible idea, all wasted on an electorate that fell in love with buzzwords and catchphrases. This is going to be a long, expensive four years.

The American foreign policy consensus of the last sixty years — in contrast to the consensus of the hundred seventy before that — is marked by a belief that the projection of American power abroad inures to America’s benefit at home, a belief honed in recent times into the idea that a de facto benign American imperium would, without real imperialism, result in a more peaceful, orderly, and prosperous world, and the data bears this out. President Obama is actively retreating from this consensus. But he is not retreating in an orderly way, consistent with his promise to improve America’s image abroad during the campaign. He is leaving the old, decades-long consensus in bloodied ribbons, with no real substitute except for what appears to be a deliberately amoral interaction with the world.

Awesome.

The question that has to be on any serious observer's mind: After rushing Congress to act, why did he wait for days to sign the "emergency" stimulus bill?

We're just now seeing this? I'm actually more inclined to think that major media organs like the LA Times are now willing to admit what has been obvious forever to anyone with common sense, largely because of the change in the occupant of the White House.

Could it be true that the biggest appropriations joke in American history may be staggering to an unexpected defeat?

...to keep from crying.

The Tale of Obamacles:

"I bid thee welcome to the White House
where your true test now begins:

Markets deaf to happy buzzwords
Blind to Shepard Fairey's art,
Heeding laws of economics,
Not the wishful laws of man;

A world of of evil filled with monsters,
who are unmoved by flowery talk,
Invulnerable to race cards
or leftwing blogger insults,
Who Hope for Change in megatons.

Do not despair! For look before you,
The noble army who brought you here:
Thespians and hiphop moguls,
Graphic artists, hipster twats,
The academic scribes of Athens,
basic cable sycophants.

These are the arrows in your quiver,
for the coming epic tests;
Use them well, but first remember:
They're waiting on those magic tricks.

Good luck with that, well-spoken hero,
I think I'll grab a snack and watch."

The same way we were united in 2000 and 2004, and the same way California is united right now over Prop 8. But don't let reality intrude on a good story:

It's all kind of confusing: 46 percent of the country voted against Obama. You would think that people in business might want to avoid potentially antagonizing such a big chunk of consumers.

My guess is that he'll be seen as something of a disaster on domestic policy, what with the massive spending and growth of the federal government. But on foreign policy? I believe he'll be vindicated.

In the avalanche of abuse and ridicule that we are witnessing in the media assessments of President Bush's legacy, there are factors that need to be borne in mind if we are to come to a judgment that is not warped by the kind of partisan hysteria that has characterised this issue on both sides of the Atlantic.

The first is that history, by looking at the key facts rather than being distracted by the loud ambient noise of the 24-hour news cycle, will probably hand down a far more positive judgment on Mr Bush's presidency than the immediate, knee-jerk loathing of the American and European elites.

We'll give it 20 years or so. Time will tell, but I think people will appreciate W's stalwart approach to foreign policy. My real fear is that Bush will look great in comparison to his successor, who will likely be as much of a disaster (or more) than Bush's predecessor on the international side...

From The Road To Serfdom, Chapter Two: The Great Utopia

To the great apostles of political freedom, the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men, release from the ties which left the individual no choice but obedience to the orders of a superior to whom he was attached. The new freedom promised, however, was to be freedom from necessity, release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice for all of us, although for some very much more than for others. Before man could truly be free, the "despotism of physical want" had to be broken, the "restraints of the economic system" relaxed.

Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth. Yet, although the promises of this new freedom were often coupled with irresponsible promises of a great increase in material wealth in a socialist society, it was not from such an absolute conquest of the niggardliness of nature that economic freedom was expected. What the promise really amounted to was that the great existing disparities in the range of choice of different people were to disappear. The demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals, and they exploited it to the full. And, although the word was used in a different sense by the two groups, few people noticed this and still fewer asked themselves whether the two kinds of freedom could really be combined.