Steyn doesn't relate Goldberg's full analogy.

Jonah G said that it's like one engine is belching smoke and the other one is on fire, and the pilot espresses concern about changing his destination because "that would change the flight plan as they knew it".

(Makes more sense and seems more brilliant in the full context)

All lefties should be forced, Clockwork Orange style, to read and memorize the second article above.

"the Beijing Fire Department will be there to saw the wall off and get you outta there. After all, it’s in their interest, right?"

What if the PRC's interest, like Tyler Durden's interest, is to turn your ample hams into soap and sell it to the elites?
(soft soap? anyone buy my soft soap?)

Obamugabe is either a user, or an idiot savant, or
both. If it's the first, he seems to have lots of
company in Washington, judging by the bare faced
nonsense being peddled none stop while the country
rapidly goes down the tube.

"THINK ABOUT A TRADE IN" is golden. If the GOP
can't win with that they are hopeless RINOs.
.

I try not to be pessimistic as a rule but I can't see any way out of this one. The amount of money they're talking about cutting - 40b or so - is functionally trivial compared to the debt and total spending, yet the Democrats (and their supporters) are fighting tooth and nail against it, and screaming about how draconian the cuts are.

Too little, too late. A retarded president and a retarded, in-denial populace (half of them, anyway) means it's going to get *ugly* at some point in the near future - ten, or twenty, years.

Geez, he has a hairdresser...

I read an article two days ago in the Ontario Out Of Doors magazine that reported on a 51 year old retired police officer that landed what may be the new world record largest ever catch and release ice fishing walleye on Mountain Lake just north of Regina.

The only thing I could think of is, "51", fifty one, how will that ever be sustainable.

The second article is probably Mark Steyn's best to date.

Does anybody have any tips of how one would go about bringing up this topic and convincing friends and relatives at dinner parties, you know , without ruining the evening ?
Sometimes I struggle.

I've already had my first interview at the US consulate to renounce my US citizenship. My second appointment will be soon.

The lady mentioned they used to get 1 or 2 people a year renouncing citizenship. Now she gets about 1 a month.

I'm not the brightest bulb in the bunch but when the US debt jumps $5 Trillion in 3 years, that just scares me. I'm working and will hopefully make a large amount of money in the future. My biggest fear is that a near bankrupt, out of control US government tries to take that income since I have American citizenship, even if I'm living overseas. I don't think that's an unreasonable fear at this point and I know since I'll never be living in the United States again, I'm best to get my official divorce papers now.

The ugliness when the entitlements can't afford to be paid is going to make Greece look like a kindergarten quarrel.

Has anyone asked Mark Steyn if he would come back home and run for PM? I would love to see Steyn debate Robert "knuckledragger" Fife or Peter "that has some people upset" Mansbridge about the state of our nation. It would also mean the absolute self-immolation of the Toronto Star elite who would be left writhing in the streets. In our Cities. In Canada.

I was somewhat disappointed that the US reached a deal with their budget. If the government was shut down, life would still bump along just fine, and people would start to question why they need a gigantic army of bureaucrats to look after them. The greatest threat to freedom and fiscal sanity in the western world is the evil, power hungry cabal of public 'servants', who leech off the industrious people, while staunchly opposing any measures to limit their cushy saleries. Until these dependent parasites are cut loose, and the size and power of the government is drastically reduced, we'll live in a world of spiraling deficits, sky high taxes, and a stagnent economy.

Has anyone asked Mark Steyn if he would come back home and run for PM?

Yeah but...he has a hairdresser! I've never heard of a real man having a hairdresser...

I could sit on the floor and listen to Steyn read from the phone book and it would be So. Freaking. Sexy.

Sorry, but every time I hear him substituting for Rush, I smile a little and turn up the radio. I love, love, love his voice.

Yeah, exactly: we are sitting ducks until we start actually USING 2A.

Ebd: its just the start. Paul Ryan's next proposal is into the trillions of cuts. And it will set the tone of the debate for the 2012 election.

Fiddle,

They haven't be producing 'barbers' for a few decades now .... all there are now are hair cutters or hair stylists or hair dressers ... you know .. people who deal with hair

You are likely bald so this is all moot to you. Not bald? Okay just uninformed.

My point ... do not slag the Great Mark Steyn.

"bringing up this topic and convincing friends and relatives at dinner parties, you know , without ruining the evening ?"

richfisher,

Get new family and friends. I did, it's better.

Yeah, no manhole covers anymore either, for the metrosexuals.

Amy P...I agree. Steyn anytime, especially as an alternative to 'whatever' EBD found to post on Reader Tips last night. Love ya EBD, but I prefer REAL men.

richfisher...there is some kind of delusion affect on North America right now.
American Idol trumps reality.
Sad really.

I thought the standard for Canadian accents was Peter Mansbridge.

My Hero, Zero travels in a car lovingly called, "The Beast." It has the gas mileage of an Abrams Main Batle Tank.

He flew Air Force One from DC to Chicago to Phoenix to Denver just to sign an energy bill. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi too separate planes to the same event.

He keeps the heat in the White House at 2 degrees because "he's from Hawaii and he likes it warm." But he chews out his kids' exclusive private school because they shut down for a snow day, saying they need to develop some "flinty Chicago touchness."

During the "greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression," he holds a $150 million inauguration party - one of many parties, with a million Demon Rats flying into DC to celebrate, soiling their Depends as they wait to hear his words like a bird waiting for crumbs of bread. The parties generated 100 tons of trash.

Prior to running for president, he owned a Chrysler 300 with a HEMI V8. He traded it in for a Hybrid SUV during the campaign immediately after a reporter asked him about his car.

Trade in? Did he ever consider that all the CO2 used to produce his 300 was a sunk cost but the new SUV added CO2 to the atmosphere from its production.

We have a moron and a hypocrite with a Harvard degree with his hand on the thermostat, his foot on the gas pedal, and his eyes on the nearest cliff.

Canadian accent, Kate?

I hear that half-North American, half-British accent Mark picked up during his years at St. Edward's School in Birmingham, England.

Now, I speak with a Canadian accent and I don't sound at all like Mark Steyn, disregarding the fact that his voice is a few octaves lower than mine!

As for the American nightmare and the Obama-nation known as the President of the United States, whadda mess and what's to be done?

They got what they wished and voted for -- Hope and Change -- a hope that's turned hopeless and change that's ruined and turned into dust a once-great and proud country and in such a short time, too. It's like the Obama-nation is the Sorcerer's Apprentice, whose wand churns everything up, with very little opposition, and has the masses marching zombie-like to oblivion.

Stateside a month ago, I met a whole lot of Americans who were just shaking their heads about the state of their union. It's like they were in a daze, wandering around, muttering "what the hell's happened?"

Amy P said, "every time I hear him substituting for Rush, I smile a little and turn up the radio"

Agreed. Mark is without a doubt, the best. I do believe Rush is grooming his replacement if and when Rush retires.

New around here, batb?

;-)

Yukon Gold @ 2.33 AM. You nailed it. The bureaucracy is like an out of control cancer gobbling up hundreds of billions of dollars on multitude of self serving projects whose purpose is to give illusion that something is being done and everything is under control. It's unfortunate government didn't shut down so that taxpayers could see that nothing much changes except billions in bloated salaries are saved.

Read Dambiso Moyo's book "How the West was lost"

New around here, batb?

Why, no, Kate. I've been around the block a few times! ;-)

batb - I don't hear the North American in it. Standard Received and ever-so-slightly-northern, I'd say, doing my Henry Higgins impression.

I was surprised the first time I heard him because his written idiom is so North American.

Accents are funny things, Black Mamba.

Occasionally, I've had people tell me I have a distinct accent ("Are you Canadian?"), while most people seem to hear no accent at all (I don't -- but that's the way it is for all of us! We don't hear our own accents, they're picked up/perceived by others).

Though Mark Steyn sounds mostly British to me, he bends some of his words so that they almost sound North American/Canadian. I mean, he was born in Canada and has lived and worked for a long time in the States, so is it any wonder that I hear some North American in there? (I do have a sensitive ear!)

I'll bet that when he goes back to Britain, all they hear is his North American accent! That's what my stepfather, who was British, got when he went back home: You don't sound British, you sound Canadian! That made him scowl.

You are now officially, as I predicted even before verifying it, Mark Steyn's Reader of The Day.

Currently, the Federal Reserve, through QE2, absorbs some seventy percent of US treasury debt issued.

Unsustainable.

So what happens when that rate of purchase is curtailed? We shall soon find out, as they are on record to end and not extend their QE program on schedule this June. Stay tuned, and get your seat belts on.

I have two questions:

1. How can anyone disagree with what Steyn is saying?

2. Of those who do disagree, how do you think they've convinced themselves that there is no financial crisis?

One day the lights will switch off. Then the left will stand around hungry still pointing fingers as to why this all happened.

45 million on food stamps, rising energy and food costs, and a runaway deficit that can never be repaid.

Yup - point away, little good it will do you when that time comes.

Too busy for the comments.
BUT, Mark has got to be a bit embarrased over that book title, eh? America Alone.

You gotta love those three stages of crisis his reader sent him. Surely one of the dumbest of the famous quotes is Santayana's: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

I mean, it's gettin' repeated anyway isn't it due to the immutability of human nature and the irrestible appeal of "it's different this time".

batb>

"Mark Steyn sounds mostly British to me"

Actually Canadian born with a British Ivy League dialect. British is a broad term, you could not compare his well rounded grammar and vocabulary to that of someone from Great Yarmouth (bohle instead of bottle – pehrol instead of petrol). No argument, Just say’n.

Styne is a hybrid or mongrel English accent; however you wish to hear it. A product of his geographical upbringing. I can sympathize, although born in Canada and far less educated than Styne I grew up around the world in a mix of English private schools and American military base schools, then Canadian.

MND

""""Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.""""

it's not that they don't remember, it's a comprehention thing, stupid is as stupid does!!!!

Me No Dhimmi - 'Surely one of the dumbest of the famous quotes is Santayana's: "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."'

Honestly, I don't care what some clapped-out old rock guitarist has to say about anything, anymore than what some forgetteable Quebecois band thinks about Stephen Harper. I'd rather hear some mechanic's opinion quite frankly ;-)

Black Mamba>

Couldn't agree more.

It’s truly bizarre the way the west now puts so much credibility into the things that successful entertainers say.

The key to it seems to be is the “successful” part. No one listens to a bum playing a guitar on the street corner yet. It just goes to show the shallow depths of equating money with reason, even though all the real world evidence proves otherwise.

Can you believe these people that actually paid money to go see Charlie Sheen rant onstage to himself recently? Then walked out because they were disappointed to find out he is nothing but a mentally retarded drug addict? The real story is not really about him, it’s about them, and the fact that they walk and vote among us.

Or a plumber's opinion. Like Joe

Link.

Link.

Eeez leedle joke.

Link.

Eeez leedle joke.

Link.

Eeez leedle joke.

Black Mamba - it's a small thing, but the quote is from George Santayana, an historian.

Me no Dhimmi - history has no lessons to teach? Really?

I think Santayan was saying that rational statesman informed with historical knowledge make better decisions than those who don't.

Heh.

richfisher at April 10, 2011 1:34 AM
"Does anybody have any tips of how one would go about bringing up this topic and convincing friends and relatives at dinner parties, you know , without ruining the evening ?
Sometimes I struggle."

I completely agree. Its one of the most telling symptoms of our situation. Most don't seem to want to think about it.

Still gotta keep trying though...

Styen is one of the few People who's brain hasn't been turned into PC Mush.
Its not his accent thats so Canadian, its the way he expresses himself in words that sounds Dominion like.
Which to be frank isn't that different than our American cousins. Where all North Americans after all.
As Kate said a while ago this Continent is organic.
We share the English heritage institutionally.
Both Canucks & Yanks love mangling the English Language to the consternation of the real English.
JMO

Love Steyn, read his books and columns and videos, just a brilliant guy.

In the same vein he would have loved to see the crowd of parasites at Dundas Square moaning about Ford's derailing of the gravy train. Every socialist and public union was represented with that commie Sid Ryan up front.

Love Steyn, read his books and columns and videos, just a brilliant guy.

Yup, his opinion and a couple dollars will buy a cup of coffee. Just like anyone else's opinion. Now what?

Yeah, fiddle, you're right. It's not like brilliant writers have ever had an impact on history or anything.

The doers have an impact. Writers, not so much.

After much "writing", PM Harper went out and did something, only at that point did anything change.

It's just entertaining blather until someone goes out and puts it into practice.

fiddle

It's just entertaining blather until someone goes out and puts it into practice.

Mark Steyn & Ezra Levant in Ottawa - part 2

You where saying? He fought the HRCS as well. What have you done to meet Steyns commitment to individual rights?

What have you done to meet Steyns commitment to individual rights?

Somebody has to work to produce something tangible in this country. You may eaten some of the beef I produced and used some of the oil and gas I helped bring to the surface. I mean the down and dirty, actually doing the work. In the mud, 50 below, uphill, both ways...

I think those two activities alone, by myself and many, many others, compare to a few days oppression of some scribe.

fiddle, I literally have no idea what you're trying to say.