Charles Adler

Folks, I want to ask you a question. In the so-called trial held in a Canadian court room, a trial to determine whether the defendant was guilty or not guilty of murdering Tim McLean, do you know how many witnesses were called? Two. Both of them psychiatrists, who both agreed that the defendant was not criminally responsible because he was ill. None of the testimony was challenged by the Prosecution because the Prosecution agreed with the Defense on everything of substance and there was no point in challenging testimony they agreed with. So who was representing the victim’s family and the family known as the Canadian people? Were there eyewitnesses to the crime? Dozens of them. The passengers and the bus driver. Why weren’t any of them called? The so-called witnesses who were called, weren’t witnesses of anything. They were two doctors who talked to the accused, who under medication told a story of God and voices. We have no evidence that he is telling the truth, but we are told that he is a sick man, obviously a sick man. Jefferey Dahmer was a sick man. Charles Manson was a sick man. Paul Bernardo was a sick man. Because the man who killed Tim McLean and presumably ate his victim’s eyeballs – because he was sick and is sick – the rest of us are forced to be sickened by the notion that he is saved from a permanent incarceration by his sickness, which the witnesses say can be medicated away.

More: The Only Voice I Hear Is Tim’s

Where people might get a chance to see him.

I dare say some of the great photo spread in the Geographic article came from a helicopter or plane: the photographer didn’t wish himself into the clouds with his high tech cameras: nor did this issue of National Geographic flood North America and the world on the wings of songbirds whistling the Ode to Joy…

Transcript

Starting March 2nd in Bill O’Reilly’s old spot. I’ll try to find an online listening link.
Update – a little birdie tells me you can listen live here.

The freedom we spoke of earlier is the freedom, it’s the ambition, it’s the desire, the wherewithal, the passions that people have that gave us the great entrepreneurial advances, the great inventions, the greatest food production, the human lifestyle advances in this country, why shouldn’t that be rewarded? Why is that now the focus of punishment? Why is that now the focus of blame? Why doesn’t — Mayor Bloomberg the other day, ladies and gentlemen, resisting his Governor’s call for an increased tax on the rich in New York had some astounding numbers. Eight million people live in New York. 40,000 of those eight million pay roughly 60 to 70% of New York’s operating budget. He was afraid that if he raised taxes on those people some of them might leave. Mayor, one already has, by the way. [Applause] Stop and think of this, though. Stop and think of this. 40,000 people out of eight million. He’s right, if 10,000 of them leave, or 5,000, they’ve got a huge problem. Because New York has its own welfare state inside the one the federal government’s created. They’ve got a dependency class that has grown up and been educated their entitlement is to be fed and taken care of by these evil mean people who have more than they do. If New York City, New York State or Washington, DC were a business, these 40,000 people would be taken on golf tournament trips to Los Angeles, and they would be wined and dined and they would be thanked and they would be encouraged to keep it up. They wouldn’t be told they’re the problem. They wouldn’t be told, except there’s — I pride my accuracy rating. There is one other business where the customer is always wrong and that’s the media. Sorry about that. [Applause]
Have you ever called to complain about whatever they do? They say, yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full. They hang up and say you’re too stupid to know how they’re doing what they’re doing. You can’t get it. You’re not sophisticated enough. So that’s another business where the customer is always wrong. But, seriously, the people who have achieved great things, most of it is not inherited. Most wealth in this country is the result of entrepreneurial, just plain old hard work. There’s no reason to punish it. There’s no reason to raise taxes on these people. Barack Obama, the Democrat Party, have one responsibility, and that’s to respect the oath they gave to protect, defend and follow the US Constitution.
They don’t have the right to take money that’s not theirs and none of it is from the back pockets of producers and give it to groups like ACORN which are going to advance the Democrat Party. If anybody but government were doing this, it would be a crime. And many of us think it’s bordering on that as it exists now.
President Obama is so busy trying to foment and create anger in a created atmosphere of crisis. He is so busy fueling the emotions of class envy that he’s forgotten it’s not his money that he’s spending. [Applause] In fact, the money he’s spending is not ours. He’s spending wealth that has yet to be created. And that is not sustainable. It will not work. This has been tried around the world. And every time it’s been tried it’s a failed disaster.

The full transcript of Rush Limbaugh’s keynote speech at CPAC for those who missed him on Fox this afternoon.
Update – The speech is now up on Youtube. Start here for the first segment. Then click on “More From: sallee5” for the rest.

Paul Harvey has died.
Well said: “The Norman Rockwell of radio.”

“Mountains of money, heaped like gassy pyramids in the national dump. Scrounging packs of politicos, snapping, snarling and sending green bills flying sky-high as they root through the tangled mass with ragged claws. The stale hot air filled with cries of rage, the gnashing of teeth and dark prophecies of doom.
Yes, this grotesque scene, like a claustrophobic circle in Dante’s “Inferno,” was what the U.S. government has looked like for the past two weeks as it fights on over Barack Obama’s stimulus package — a mammoth, chaotic grab bag of treasures, toys and gimcracks. Could popular opinion of our feckless Congress sink any lower?”

You betcha!

One to share with your kids and grandkids.
h/t

Just yesterday I heard someone from the opposition benches state to news media that if Canadian banks refused to loan money out, the government should force them to.
Well, we know how that turned out. (Or we would if there was a modicum of competence in our major news media – Canadians have to go online to learn of the Community Reinvestment Act’s role in creating the housing bubble.)
“Turning Japanese”

The U.S. National Debt was $930 billion in 1980, or 33% of GDP. Today it is $10.7 trillion, or 76% of GDP. The National Debt has grown by 1,150% in 28 years. With the planned fiscal stimulus (taxing future generations), the National Debt will reach 100% of GDP during the Obama administration. When Argentina’s economy collapsed in 1998, their National Debt as a percentage of GDP was 65%. The Great Deniers say we are not Argentina. They say we are safe because the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency of the world. This is like jumping off a 20 story building and as you pass the 10th floor someone yells out the window asking how you are doing. You answer, “Good, so far”.
[…]
It is unambiguous, after examining the data, that we have borrowed ourselves to the brink of disaster. Both government and consumers have leveraged themselves to an untenable level. The only logical way to resolve this quandary is to reduce spending, pay down the debt, and increase savings. This is what consumers have begun to do. With consumer spending accounting for 72% of GDP, we are experiencing a serious recession due to the decrease in consumer spending. The excesses are being painfully wrung out of the system. This process is unacceptable to the socialist politicians who are in domination of the United States today. The government and Federal Reserve have already committed $8 trillion of taxpayer funds to bailing out criminally negligent insolvent banks. Now the Obama administration is going to spend in excess of $1 trillion in an effort to stimulate the economy. They insist that it must be bold and swift. How about well thought out, deliberative, and effective?

Just a couple of excerpts from a sobering, excellent article. A must-read that we need to send on to our intellectual superiors (of all parties) in Ottawa.
h/t Mike K.
A related, Canadian viewpoint (pdf) – ” we’ve been pumping stimulus into our economies for years now, to the point where they are more stimulated than a grade three class on Ritalin.”

The American form of government.

Far too many Westerners make the mistake of projecting their own views onto Palestinians without really understanding the Palestinian narrative. The “occupation” doesn’t refer to the West Bank and Gaza, and it never has. The “occupation” refers to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. A kibbutz in the center of Israel is “occupied Palestine” according to most. “It makes no sense to a Palestinian to think about a Palestinian state alongside Israel,” Martin Kramer from the Shalem Center in Jerusalem said to me a few days ago. “From the Palestinian perspective, Israel will always exist inside Palestine.”
“Making peace with the Palestinians is harder than making peace with other Arabs,” said Asher Susser, Senior Research Fellow at Tel Aviv University. “With the Palestinians we have a 1948 file as well as a 1967 file. With other Arabs we only have a 1967 file. The 1967 file relates to our size, but the 1948 file relates to our very being. It is nearly impossible to resolve because we cannot compromise on our being.”

The rest is here

Obama takes on the least among them.
(Speaking of choosing his confrontations…)

“In 2004, George W. Bush continued dividing America with his divisive policies by divisively winning the election with 50.7 per cent of the vote. In 2008, Barack Obama united the entire world in a unifying spirit of unity by winning with 52.9 per cent of the vote. ”

The politician will revel with his people and enjoy their enjoyments. The statesman, in continual stress of soul, will think of destruction. As others move in the light, he will move in darkness, so that as others move in darkness he may move in the light. This tenacity, that is given to those of long and insistent vision, is what saves nations. *

Farewell, President Bush

I wouldn’t reconsider my vote for Barack Hussein Obama, in other words, and when he takes the oath, I hope to have a ringside seat. I already know something about “the speech” and its Lincolnian tropes. (If you want your own understated preview, take a look at what he said to the crowd in Baltimore Saturday, as his whistle-stop train made its way from Philadelphia to D.C.’s Union Station.) But, on the last day of his presidency, I want to say why I still do not wish that Al Gore had beaten George W. Bush in 2000 or that John Kerry had emerged the victor in 2004.

The rest is here.
More from Victor Davis Hanson – Bush Considered

“In no field is Hans Christian Andersen’s fable about the Emperor’s new clothes more salient than contemporary art; or, to put it another way, in no commercial field are there so many Bernie Madoffs.”- Theodore Dalrymple

(Related – Against the dehumanization of Art)

“You can get it in any color as long as it’s red.“

(Trivia – When I first got on the net in 1999, I still had a rotary phone. Finally upgraded to touch-tone about two years later.)
Via Captain Capitalism

“… I possess no confidence in the ability of the American electorate to make sensible decisions. I have reached this conclusion based on an incontrovertible truth: You people will believe anything.“

Donald McNowski (scroll past Michael Daly’s heavy breathing to the comments section)

I think it’s great that the son of Basil Paterson gets to choose between the daughter of JFK or the son of Mario Cuomo in order to replace the wife of Bill Clinton in the Senate. Thank God for democracy.

(Yeah – why not Chelsea?)

Calling out Liberal pillow-talkers posing as political pundits;

The continuing disregard the Liberals have for the West was illustrated perfectly by their now-defunct leader Stephane Dion’s back room deal with the NDP, supported by the Bloc Quebecois, to defeat the Harper government — post election — without having to fight another one.
Indeed, it’s hard to imagine a Liberal caucus with any significant representation from Western Canada, or even one truly concerned about national unity, agreeing to such a deal, knowing the fury it would set off in the West.
Much of the Ottawa media — who constantly adopt the Liberal narrative of Canada as their own — joined the Liberals in blasting Harper for saying what was accurate: That the Liberal/NDP/Bloc accord is an unprecedented deal with Quebec separatists, giving them more power than they have ever had before, and one which, if implemented, would weaken Canada.
This Liberal/media complaint was based on their insistence calling separatists, separatists is forbidden, because it offends Quebecers, unless, of course, Liberals are doing it, in which case it’s OK.

Precisely.