New Patriot Generation

Camille Paglia defends Sarah Palin

2008-10-08T13:15:00.000-04:00

Camille Paglia on Salon pens one of the most, if not the most, eloquent defense of Sarah Palin:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/index1.html

Michelle Malkin � The Boston Globe: In the bag for Obama

2008-10-02T12:11:00.000-04:00

Michelle Malkin � The Boston Globe: In the bag for Obama: "The Boston Globe, which refuses to correct its factually-challenged smear of Sarah Palin over rape kits, has an online store. According to its “About Us” page, the store was formed in 1996 “to make The Globe’s extensive photo archives and content available for both people and businesses…In addition to offering the historic images and content of New England’s largest newspaper, the Globe Store also has a growing selection of books and products that celebrate our region’s personalities, sports teams, history, and places.”"

Media Bias Smackdown

2008-10-02T10:04:00.000-04:00

The Media Research Council reports that Maureen Dowd of the NY Times was officially kicked off the McCain campaign plane. From the article:

Let's face it, Dowd is not a journalist. She is an opinion editorialist. She does not report, she opines. She simply cannot be expected to present unbiased news.

That sums it up...

AEI analysts comment upon the first Presidential debate

2008-09-30T15:07:00.001-04:00

Michael Rubin and Danielle Pletka from the American Enterprise Institute weigh-in on the first debate. Rubin flatly refutes Obama's notion that there should be no pre-conditions to discussions with leaders such as Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-Il:

Obama's view of diplomacy appears both utopian and dangerous. Neither the Iranian nor North Korean nuclear programs are the result of too little talk; they are the result of too much.

Pletka acknowledges Obama's oratorical capabilities:

Obama is a capable speaker, a deft debater and a quick study. On issues that have raised doubts about his various positions on national security questions, he was able to explain in context his willingness to sit down and negotiate without preconditions with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and other dictators.

She is not critical of his delivery or diction, but of the opinions to which they belong:

Unfortunately, what was missing from Obama's well-briefed presentation was a worldview that informs his disparate views about America's national security challenges. The presidency is not a defense of one's post-doctoral dissertation.

This article is a short read, so enjoy: http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.28695/pub_detail.asp

Harvard Economist Slams the $700b Bailout

2008-09-30T10:15:00.001-04:00

Harvard economist and Libertarian Jeffrey A. Miron slammed the $700B bailout on CNN.com. Miron starts by going right after the subprime lending fiasco:

Worse, beginning in 1977 and even more in the 1990s and the early part of this century, Congress pushed mortgage lenders and Fannie/Freddie to expand subprime lending. The industry was happy to oblige, given the implicit promise of federal backing, and subprime lending soared.

This subprime lending was more than a minor relaxation of existing credit guidelines. This lending was a wholesale abandonment of reasonable lending practices in which borrowers with poor credit characteristics got mortgages they were ill-equipped to handle.

"Wholesale abandonment" is strong language, but justified in this case. Miron makes the case that these companies should be allowed to fail:

The fact that government bears such a huge responsibility for the current mess means any response should eliminate the conditions that created this situation in the first place, not attempt to fix bad government with more government.

The obvious alternative to a bailout is letting troubled financial institutions declare bankruptcy. Bankruptcy means that shareholders typically get wiped out and the creditors own the company.

Miron also believes that if these companies are worth being bailed out, then they are worth being bought:

Bankruptcy does not mean the company disappears; it is just owned by someone new (as has occurred with several airlines). Bankruptcy punishes those who took excessive risks while preserving those aspects of a businesses that remain profitable.

In contrast, a bailout transfers enormous wealth from taxpayers to those who knowingly engaged in risky subprime lending. Thus, the bailout encourages companies to take large, imprudent risks and count on getting bailed out by government. This "moral hazard" generates enormous distortions in an economy's allocation of its financial resources.

Except in limited cases, these companies are not being bought. Miron explains that everyone is waiting for the government to act and bail them out at taxpayer expense:

Further, the current credit freeze is likely due to Wall Street's hope of a bailout; bankers will not sell their lousy assets for 20 cents on the dollar if the government might pay 30, 50, or 80 cents.

Finally, he ends on a note of defiance against the bailout and Wall Street tycoons:

The right view of the financial mess is that an enormous fraction of subprime lending should never have occurred in the first place. Someone has to pay for that. That someone should not be, and does not need to be, the U.S. taxpayer.

Democrats In Their Own Words Covering Up Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam

2008-09-29T08:08:00.000-04:00

Hmmm... This is obviously a very biased video against the Dems; however, they damn themselves with these words. It appears that our representatives forgave these companies in order to allow greater levels of home ownership to satisfy their constituents.

Is Bill Clinton Raining on Obama's Parade?

2008-09-26T10:03:00.001-04:00

Our friends over at NewsBusters, with attribution to Politico, have a great analysis of former President Bill Clinton's seeming apathy towards campaigning for Barack Obama. Clinton recently announced that he would not campaign for Obama until after the Jewish high holidays culminating October 9, 2008. Huh? From Politico's Ben Smith:

In an interview with CNN's Larry King airing tonight, Bill Clinton offered a slightly unusual reason for postponing his campaigning for Obama: The Jewish high holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which he's not known to observe.

"When [the Clinton Global Initiative] is over, and after the Jewish holidays, which follow close on it, I intend to go to Florida, to Ohio, to northeast Pennsylvania, and to Nevada at a minimum," he said. "I may do events in Arkansas depending on what the Democratic Party does down there. And I've agreed to do some fundraising for them in California and New York."

I am now official fascinated with Bill Clinton's ability to spin. Is this Obama's punishment for beating Hillary and then not picking her for VP? As a follow-up, Clinton then went on ABC's Good Morning America and dropped this bomb on the Angry Left

We know he didn't do it because he's afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates.

...I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted -- I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that.

Did we just hear Bill Clinton making excuses for John McCain? This produced the expected nuclear explosion from the netroots crowd. Here are several quotes from netroots commenters found in the NewsBusters article:

SHUT THE HELL UP BILL!!! I can't stand his ass anymore.

the reality is that his presidency was All About Bill, he screwed interns and progressive values with equal abandon, and he ushered in Republican control of all three brances of the government.

What "Jewish Holidays" was he talking about on Larry King,He said he would campaign for Obama after. The Jewish Holidays, WTF message is he trying to send. This is a man that knows exactly what his words are and mean.

Bill Clinton is a black hole that runs on egotism. I am so sick of tired, old act. Don't go away mad, Bill. Just go away.

PRICE-LESS!

NY Times Article From 1999 Reveals the Roots of the Current Economic Crisis

2008-09-26T09:25:00.001-04:00

In 1999 (yes, 9 years ago!), the NY Times published what is now a revealing and prescient article about the loosening of mortgage requirements for now-defunct Fannie Mae.

In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders.

Good lead-in! Easing of credit requirements has been cited as one of the root causes of the current economic crisis. The next paragraph is even better.

The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets -- including the New York metropolitan region -- will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring.

Individuals whose credit is generally not good enough? Why would we ever loan to these folks? The next paragraph is the reveal.

Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

The dreaded Clinton administration! And the Fannie Mae stockholders! An evil nexus of social programs and capitalism if ever there was one. In the following paragraph, the chairman of Fannie Mae explains the rationale.

''Fannie Mae has expanded home ownership for millions of families in the 1990's by reducing down payment requirements,'' said Franklin D. Raines, Fannie Mae's chairman and chief executive officer. ''Yet there remain too many borrowers whose credit is just a notch below what our underwriting has required who have been relegated to paying significantly higher mortgage rates in the so-called subprime market.''

The downsides of this action were foreseen. Perhaps it was thought the economy would never have a downturn. Remember, 1999 was during the peak of the dot com boom.

In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

Was anyone thinking about the potential problems this could have created? As it turns out, the conservative American Enterprise Institute warned of the potential dangers.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''

Ugh. The penultimate paragraph alludes to the problems with making subprime loans to those who cannot afford them.

In July, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed that by the year 2001, 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low and moderate-income borrowers. Last year, 44 percent of the loans Fannie Mae purchased were from these groups.

Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools

2008-09-23T15:26:00.002-04:00

The Wall Street Journal had a well-researched article detailing the connections between presidential candidate Barack Obama and William Ayers. Ayers is a former member of the radical 1960s group called the Weathermen Underground. Amongst other actions, they were responsible for bombing the Pentagon. The opening paragraph does a good job of setting up the rest.

Despite having authored two autobiographies, Barack Obama has never written about his most important executive experience. From 1995 to 1999, he led an education foundation called the Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC), and remained on the board until 2001. The group poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.

The CAC had some interesting criteria for selecting schools to receive funding:

The CAC's agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers's educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland's ghetto.

The theme of radicalism and protest put forth by Ayers and the CAC, with Obama as chairman, doesn't sound like any educational platform put forth by his campaign:

Mr. Ayers is the founder of the "small schools" movement (heavily funded by CAC), in which individual schools built around specific political themes push students to "confront issues of inequity, war, and violence." He believes teacher education programs should serve as "sites of resistance" to an oppressive system. (His teacher-training programs were also CAC funded.) The point, says Mr. Ayers in his "Teaching Toward Freedom," is to "teach against oppression," against America's history of evil and racism, thereby forcing social transformation.

The most interesting fact about the entire Ayers/Obama episode is the candidate's continued denial of having worked closely with Ayers.

The Obama campaign has cried foul when Bill Ayers comes up, claiming "guilt by association." Yet the issue here isn't guilt by association; it's guilt by participation. As CAC chairman, Mr. Obama was lending moral and financial support to Mr. Ayers and his radical circle. That is a story even if Mr. Ayers had never planted a single bomb 40 years ago.

I don't think that the American people are seeking to educate their children in Bill Ayer's model.

Mogwai's Brathwaite Howls About Hawk, CDs, Bush | Listening Post from Wired.com

2008-09-22T12:17:00.000-04:00

Here is a recent article from Wired about Mogwai, the post-rock band from Scotland. I don't care for their politics and feel that it adds nothing of value to this article; however, they are on the edge.

Mogwai's Brathwaite Howls About Hawk, CDs, Bush | Listening Post from Wired.com

Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped' - September 22, 2008 - The New York Sun

2008-09-22T12:15:00.000-04:00

This is the speech that Sarah Palin WOULD HAVE given at the Ahmadinejad protest event on 9/22, except that Hillary's whining won out!

After reading this speech, I know understand why the Democrats did not want her to give it. It is excellent. Her points are direct, cogent and harsh. I personally think that she should have held her own alternative protest event.

Palin on Ahmadinejad: 'He Must Be Stopped' - September 22, 2008 - The New York Sun

Video of Gov. Palin's return to Alaska

2008-09-11T09:12:00.000-04:00

First podcast

2008-09-09T15:06:00.001-04:00

Commentary: Last thing we need now is a great leader - CNN.com

2008-09-03T21:14:00.000-04:00

Commentary: Last thing we need now is a great leader - CNN.com: "Obama and McCain both promise a government that will watch over us ... 'I don't like that,' says Penn Jillette.

Everyone I talk to seems to think the president of the United States right now is stupid.

The Bush presidency is stupid speeches, stupid high gas prices, stupid bad economy, stupid war on terrorism, stupid war on drugs, stupid hurricane fixing, stupid global warming, stupid war -- stupid, stupid, stupid.

They all seem to think we need to get a smarter guy in the White House fast, and Bush is so stupid, that task shouldn't be too hard.

Not me.

I'd like to say that I believe every president in United States history, including the stupid one we have now, is smarter than me. My alma mater is Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth Clown College, so I'm damning with faint praise, but I'm stupider than this here stupid president."

Toy Story Mania Tips and Tricks

2008-08-26T14:35:00.000-04:00

Here is an excellent strategy guide for the Toy Story Mania ride. This video was apparently made at Disneyland in California, but after experiencing the Disney World version several times, I can say that they appear to be identical.

Bolt Is Freaky Fast, But Nowhere Near Human Limits | Wired Science from Wired.com

2008-08-26T08:13:00.000-04:00

Bolt Is Freaky Fast, But Nowhere Near Human Limits | Wired Science from Wired.com
"As astonishing as Usain Bolt's record-breaking 100-meter sprint was, his time of 9.69 seconds is nowhere near what biostatisticians predict is the natural limit for the human body.

But because he broke the mathematical model that had fit 100-meter record data for almost a century, Bolt's incredible performance could reset how fast researchers believe humans ultimately can run."

Gold Medal Winner Kerri Walsh Thanks President Bush | NewsBusters.org

2008-08-21T22:42:00.000-04:00

Gold Medal Winner Kerri Walsh Thanks President Bush | NewsBusters.org: "A couple of astounding things happened at the Olympics on Thursday.

First, the American beach volleyball team of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh successfully defended their gold medal victory in 2004 becoming the first in the sport to win back to back Olympic championships.

Second, during their post-match interview, Kerri grabbed the microphone, looked into the camera, and thanked President Bush (video available here courtesy our dear friend Ms Underestimated, h/t NBer Bruzilla):

Mr. President, we thank you. Thank you for your inspiration, and for all you do."

Happy Birthday, Compact Disc. Now Go Away | Listening Post from Wired.com

2008-08-18T15:21:00.000-04:00

Happy Birthday, Compact Disc. Now Go Away | Listening Post from Wired.com: "On this day in 1982, Sony and Philips Consumer Electronics released the first CDs to the German public, forever changing the way music would be distributed, marketed, consumed and appreciated. Now would be a great time to change it all again.

Yes, the compact disc is celebrating its birthday of sorts, and it's been a good run. As cool as vinyl was (and is), it was big and required a delicate machine that demanded human interaction, especially if you wanted to skip a tune. CDs were smaller, faster and digital, the perfect product for a new era of hyperconsumption and hyperspeed. But that era has come to an end."

Making Putin Pay - WSJ.com

2008-08-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

Making Putin Pay - WSJ.com: "Vladimir Putin proved last weekend that Russia's army can push over Georgia's army. In the past 48 hours, the West has begun to push back. If its leaders stay the course, they may yet turn Mr. Putin's meager military success into a significant political defeat.

In Washington yesterday, President Bush issued a statement of precisely the sort the world expects from American leadership in such circumstances. It made clear what he understands to be Mr. Putin's goals and made equally clear the intention to resist those goals, and why doing so is in the world's interests."

For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time - WSJ.com

2008-08-14T15:12:00.000-04:00

Imagine that America had no system of post-secondary education, and you were a member of a task force assigned to create one from scratch. One of your colleagues submits this proposal:

First, we will set up a single goal to represent educational success, which will take four years to achieve no matter what is being taught. We will attach an economic reward to it that seldom has anything to do with what has been learned. We will urge large numbers of people who do not possess adequate ability to try to achieve the goal, wait until they have spent a lot of time and money, and then deny it to them. We will stigmatize everyone who doesn't meet the goal. We will call the goal a 'BA.'

Read the entire article at: For Most People, College Is a Waste of Time - WSJ.com

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

2008-08-08T12:18:00.000-04:00

Today Now!: How To Pretend You Give A Shit About The Election

'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man

2008-08-08T12:12:00.000-04:00

'Cosmopolitan' Institute Completes Decades-Long Study On How To Please Your Man

106 mpg 'air car' creates buzz, questions - CNN.com

2008-08-08T11:51:00.000-04:00

(CNN) -- You've heard of hybrids, electric cars and vehicles that can run on vegetable oil. But of all the contenders in the quest to produce the ultimate fuel-efficient car, this could be the first one to let you say, 'Fill it up with air.'
The compressed air car planned for the U.S. market would be a six-seater, a New York company says.

The compressed air car planned for the U.S. market would be a six-seater, a New York company says.

That's the idea behind the compressed air car, a vehicle its backers say could achieve a fuel economy of 106 miles per gallon.

Read the entire article at 106 mpg 'air car' creates buzz, questions - CNN.com

Former 'Lost Boy' to lead U.S. Olympians in Beijing - CNN.com

2008-08-07T13:40:00.000-04:00

Former 'Lost Boy' to lead U.S. Olympians in Beijing - CNN.com

BEIJING, China (CNN) -- A U.S. athlete who overcame the chaos of war in Sudan to become a middle-distance runner in the United States will carry the American flag during Friday's opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Games.
Lopez Lomong competes during Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, last month.

Lopez Lomong competes during Olympic trials in Eugene, Oregon, last month.

Lopez Lomong, a 23-year-old competitor in the 1,500-meter race, will lead the U.S. Olympic team as the flagbearer.

Lomong spent 10 years in the refugee camp before the U.S. government resettled him as a refugee in the town of Tully, in upstate New York.

Lomong attended high school in Tully and went on to Northern Arizona University. He became a U.S. citizen in July 2007.

"The American flag means everything in my life -- everything that describes me, coming from another country and going through all the stages that I have to become a U.S. citizen," Lomong said in the USOC statement. "This is another amazing step for me in celebrating being an American."

Stalinism Was Just as Bad as Nazism - WSJ.com

2008-08-07T13:34:00.000-04:00

Last week Russia furiously attacked President Bush for his proclamation on Captive Nations Week (July 20-July 26), which was established to raise awareness of countries living under communist and other oppressive regimes. Mr. Bush said that, 'In the 20th century, the evils of Soviet communism and Nazi fascism were defeated and freedom spread around the world as new democracies emerged.'

Read the entire article at: Stalinism Was Just as Bad as Nazism - WSJ.com