Comments on The Belmont Club,"As apple pie"

Rahm Emmanuel, the Judas Goat of this administration, told 300 major contributors to Jewish organizations that Israel had better acquiesce to the Palestinian state, or else. The "or else" being an Iranian nuke. There has never been thuggery like this from the White House. No matter what you thought of Andrew Jackson or Lincoln or FDR or LBJ or Nixon or any of them, this is violence and theft in broad daylight. My Father once said of someone, "He has the nerves of a Burglar."

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The government is a beast that can and will simultaneously tax gasoline and tires and raise highway and bridge tolls to subsidize mass transit while raising other taxes, thereby crippling the businesses and individuals who would use the mass transit systems, in order to subsidize the UAW that can't support itself by building automobiles for the market.

Most people believe that rent control works. Most people will believe in anything that shifts the shell hiding the costly pea.

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Robohobo,
And this is from a lifelong Democrat!
One tactic the MoveOn Democrats and their media coconspirators abused was the testimonial condemning Bush that always started "I am a loyal lifelong Republican but..." It was so overdone and was so obviously fake that it became a running joke in the blogosphere. Since the purpose was to establish a trail that could be referred back to later when feeding a story to the rubes the ridicule it received from the initial audience was unimportant. The technique might have roots in the old Soviet trick of planting a story in the New York Times, caring only incidentally about the Americans who might be gullible enough to swallow it but knowing that the ability to point it out later in the Third World would be priceless. "You do not believe me Comrade? My source is The New York Times." I expect that deception is not the case with Mr Card, who probably really exists, but the use of the line on our side does make it all the better.

The Census I believe is remaining under the Commerce Department but I have no confidence in how it will be conducted.

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Michigan is rapidly becoming the American Lebanon. There are four interest groups in play and three of them are acting against the interests of the nation. The majority of the state is still a productive blend of small and large communities populated by a mix of assimilating immigrants and the descendants of the settlers of the 19th century. Traditional midwestern culture is productive. The problem is in the confluence of the other forces. There are the coddled elites of the left wing university enclaves MSU in Lansing and UM in Ann Arbor and their satellites form a significant power bloc with about 100,000 students and associated faculty and other stakeholders. The Automobile and other industrialized industries are but a shadow of their former selves but were the crucible in which a dysfunctional proletarian subculture developed over decades. This being America marginalized racial minorities became caught up in the trap of high wage semiskilled factory labor. Now there are concentrated pockets around Detroit of several hundred thousand people with expectations completely divorced from what the market would offer them. Michigan is also home to a large and growing Islamic community, particularly around Dearborn. Which unlike earlier immigrants from the Middle East, who were largely Christian, show little sign of assimilating and who may interact with other groups to reinforce mutually radical elements.