So, after an afternoon of “did they or didn’t they,” we have confirmation that the government in North Korea launched an Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile — you know, one of those things that could drop a multi-megaton-sized firecracker on Tokyo, or Seoul, or … Los Angeles:
Okay, I actually like Mort Kondracke: he’s a reasonable guy and, Lord knows, reasonable people are in short supply these days. Trouble is, he tries so hard to see the other side and meet someone half-way, he winds up conceding the political arena to an opponent who has no interest in compromise — the progressive Democrats.
The Heritage Foundation ran a contest to see if anyone could come up with better gifts for the Queen than the iPod the Obamas gave her. They divided it into two parts: thoughtful gifts and humorous ones. Some of the thoughtful gifts were truly excellent — Obama’s protocol people should take notes. But one of the facetious gifts was my favorite:
Ed Morrissey explodes the meme that the left is trying to make reality that President Obama was just trying to pick something up off the floor when he bowed before Saudi King Abdullah. He notes that, throughout the bow, Obama’s right hand is engaged in a handshake and his left hand remains in view.
When the housing bubble burst last summer, people started worrying about more than just the values of their homes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac collapsed and, in their wake, took down major banks like Bear, Sterns and legendary insurance giants like AIG. If you’re an investor, you can recall when these stocks were among those considered to be as close to “sure things” as any investment could be. Their collapse, and the threatened fall of other big banking houses, was and is frightening.
ST put this warning from Newt Gingrich about a third party springing up in 2012 up in Hot Headlines yesterday, which gives me the perfect opportunity to launch into my thoughts on this possibility. I’ve been tossing this around for the last 4 years, since President Bush’s re-election, when I became convinced that a significant portion of the Republican Party was more interested in purchasing the middle by growing government than actually opposing the Socialization of America espoused by the Democrats since LBJ. I’ve alluded to my thought process several times in my looks at where conservatism has been the last couple years.
