Right Wing Nut House

My latest column is up at PJ Media. It’s a look at last night’s SOTU address and why such formal speeches are worse than useless. Jules Crittendon first offers his thoughts on the speech so make sure you read his take also.

A sample:

Not a word about the dollar which is tanking in international markets. Nor did the president mention record trade deficits. He alluded to a “decline” in the housing market, forgetting to mention that for the first time in memory, housing values dropped. It also slipped his mind that around 1 1/2 million Americans are apt to lose their homes in the coming year regardless of what he, the Congress, or the entire federal government does about it.

All of this may or may not lead to a recession. But it is equally uncertain whether throwing $130 billion dollars that we don’t have at people in the form of “rebates” will do anything except get most of the Congress re-elected.

My latest Pajamas Media column is up. I detail the process by which Fredheads are being wooed by the various campaigns.

A sample:

Being wooed in this manner would be flattering if the attentions were wanted. I guess now I know how Britney Spears feels. Well, I would if I were an ex-teenage pop star with mental health issues and an impulse control problem. Perhaps a better analogy would be woman being pursued by several suitors, who, while uninterested in spending the rest of her life with them, doesn’t wish to hurt their feelings to the point that they would forego giving her the expensive presents and nights on the town she has become accustomed to.

For most who supported Thompson, there is that all-important second choice. And to analyze who will probably benefit the most from Thompson’s pullout, you must look from where Thompson’s major support was coming.

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s on the Michigan primary and the mess that is the GOP race for president.

A sample:

Each successive contest in the Republican primary gauntlet has shown that GOP voters are dissatisfied with their choices and have very little idea of who should lead them. They tried on the center-left populism of Mike Huckabee’s religious crusade of a candidacy and didn’t like the fit. They decisively rejected the maverick McCain in Michigan. Now they’re tasting Romney a la King and will decide whether to enjoy the repast or send it back to the chef for being overdone.

The aimlessness of Republicans as they continue to search for a leader is not a catastrophe – at the moment. But if the GOP can’t make up its mind prior to the end of the primaries, the small but not impossible chance that they would enter their convention in September without a nominee stares them in the face.

My latest Pajamas Media column is up and it deals with Hillary’s surprise win last night in the New Hampshire primary.

A sample:

Living in this little internet cocoon being bombarded by the daily spin of pundits, prognosticators, “experts,” and the campaigns themselves, it is quite easy to fall for a buzz that everyone – and I mean everyone – was touting.

I have been following politics for 35 years and cannot recall such a universal, all encompassing and ultimately, totally overblown media frenzy about a candidate that turned out to be so extraordinarily wrong. There’s a lesson there for us somewhere but frankly, I am too stunned to see it at the moment. Political pros were even swept up in Obamania and fell victim to being in love with the sound of their own voices pouring superlatives and encomiums on the senator from Illinois.

My latest at PJ Media is up. It’s a response to the ridiculous op-ed of Tom Friedman’s in yesterday’s New York Times. Friedman wants us to “move on to 9/12″ and calls Americans “stupid” for allowing 9/11 to knock “America completely out of balance.”

A sample:

Friedman doesn’t want to move on from 9/11. He wants to pretend that 9/11 never happened. He wants to return to the time where our “openness” cost us dearly. This is not to say that reforms shouldn’t be made to policies that have shown themselves to be stupid or ineffective. That too would be irrational. But Friedman’s thesis is that the precautions we have taken since 9/11 are making us unpopular around the world and have roiled our politics here at home.

But you can’t move on to 9/12 without acknowledging that 9/11 happened. It is apparent that Friedman believes the US would be a better place if 9/11 never occurred and we never had to respond to the dangers it exposed. This is not only stating the obvious but calls into question Mr. Friedman’s cognitive thinking skills.

My latest PJ Media column is up. It’s about what’s going on in my little community of Algonquin and how for my neighbors, that kind of news trumps what’s going on in the rest of the world.

A sample:

The Internet is truly a seductive place. It is the 18-year-old blond hard body with legs that don’t quit, swishing through a lunchtime crowd of 40-something paunched, balding, married men wishing they didn’t have two kids, a wife with a headache every night, and a mortgage to rival the national debt. With a flick of her hip, the seductress will whisk them all away to some place where they don’t have to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home from work or take the kid to soccer practice. Instead, our middle-aged Lotharios imagine themselves… (Insert current fantasy here.)

Getting caught up in earth-shaking events and the personalities that shape them is all well and good. But there are times when instead of peering at the monitor, gleaning the latest news from thousands of miles away, we should be looking out the window instead. What’s going on in your community? Your neighborhood? Next door?

My latest column at PJ Media is about the Petreaus hearings. A sample:

There are few things in Washington that get the political juices flowing more quickly than an important Congressional hearing. Part heavyweight title bout, part high school musical, when the gavel comes down and the kleig lights click on, America’s leaders paste on their most serious faces and prepare for their five minutes of notoriety with all the care and solemnity of a bride getting ready for her walk down the aisle.

This is why rather than asking the witnesses questions, members generally gave speeches about why they support/oppose the surge, usually concluding by asking some rhetorical question along the lines of “How many times did you beat your wife today, General?” or “Why do puppies find you so irresistible, sir?”

My newest column at PJ Media is up and in it, I use my harrowing experience with last week’s flood as a parable to highlight the need for disaster preparedness for you and your family.

A sample:

Crystal Creek, a normally quiet little burn that meanders through our property just before emptying into the Fox River less than a hundred yards from our front door, was looking more like the Colorado River rapids than the lazy stream Sue and I would fish on during relaxed summer weekends. And as the river downstream from our creek rose, the water began to back up. First, it flooded the brand new Cornish Park across the street from our little house. And then slowly, ominously, the brown torrent began to slide over the brand new retaining wall put in by the Army Corps of Engineers just last fall and inch its way up our newly sculpted back yard. The Corps had landscaped the yard so that there was a much more pronounced hill in front of the house which was supposed to protect us from all but the worst case flooding scenarios.

Sure enough, at 5:45, a knock at the door. It was the police telling us it was time to go. We had until 2:00 AM to pack up whatever we could and leave.

My latest sports column is up at Pajamas Media. In it, I lay into Michael Vick and tell the story of how the prosecutors were able to pressure him into pleading guilty.

A sample:

Michael Vick will be out of football this season and almost certainly next season as well. And if it comes out that his Bad Newz Kennels was involved with even shadier characters and practices, that suspension could become permanent. But whatever punishment meted out to the young man, it pales in comparison to what he put those helpless animals through during their short, brutal lives.

For that, there is nothing in the United States Code that covers the cruelty and depraved indifference shown by Vick toward those animals nor the manner in which he sought to deceive everyone about his nefarious and heartless enterprises.

My latest PJ Media sports article is up and I take a look at the Chicago Cubs and their chances of winning it all this year - thus ending by far the longest title drought in professional sports.

A sample:

If you live in Chicago or one of the many Midwestern enclaves where baseball fans live and die with the fortunes of their Cubs every year, you are probably getting a little nervous right about now.

Then again, I know better.