Last night was the night when we, as Americans, set aside our political differences and came together to watch Sharknado. But time hurries on! Time for another Friday LinkSwarm:
50+ years of Democratic rule turn Detroit into a failed city.
Thomas Sowell: The Left refuse to grapple with the issue of Evil. “Disarmament means making decent, law-abiding people more vulnerable to evil people.”
ObamaCare mandate delayed. “It has become a trope among defenders of the law that its flaws are the fault of Republicans because they don’t want to fix them. They must have seen their own peculiar version of Schoolhouse Rock!: The first step in making a law is jamming a massive bill down the opposition’s throat. The second is whining that the opposition won’t fix problems inherent in the bill jammed down their throats.”
Funny how three day weekends where you have to work Friday always leave you with more stuff you need to do rather than less. So here’s the Friday LinkSwarm on Monday.
“Barack Hussein Obama: You Killed the Arab Spring.” And other anti-Obama signs from Egyptian protesters.
Thomas Sowell: “The political left’s welfare state makes poverty more comfortable, while penalizing attempts to rise out of poverty. Unless we believe that some people are predestined to be poor, the left’s agenda is a disservice to them, as well as to society.”
“All the net growth in employment among the working-age (ages 16–65) over the last decade went to immigrants (legal and illegal). Since 2000 the total number of immigrants employed is up by 5.3 million, while native-born employment is down 1.3 million.”
“Modern liberalism, among other things, is a psychological state, in which very-well-off Americans find ways through their income and privilege to be exempt from the ramifications of their own ideologies, while adopting causes and pets that exempt them from guilt over their own status and limitless opportunities. Judging by their concrete actions, they are indifferent to the poor whom they romanticize at a safe distance.”
Disgraced former NY governor to run for New York City comptroller…against his former madam. Gee, the Eliot Spitzers and Anthony Weiners of the world must really miss all the fawning and graft.
UT ranks 26th on the list of top 100 universities in the world. Don’t know how accurate that ranking is, but it must rankle Yalies to rank a mere 10th…and behind Harvard!
How does a Western cost $250 million to make, even after Johnny Depp has taken a pay cut? Unless half the budget went to cocaine?
The inevitable has happened. The Egyptian military has deposed corrupt, dictatorial Muslim Brotherhood President Mohammed Morsi, suspended his Islamist-tainted constitution, and promised new elections. Adly Mansour, the head of Egypt’s Supreme Constitutional Court, is Egypt’s new president.
There are coups and there are coups. Morsi was trying to pull the classic “one man, one vote, once” maneuver of turning Egypt into a one party Islamic state under his dictatorship. So intent was he on this goal that ignored trivial Presidential duties like reviving the economy and protecting the lives, liberty and property of Egyptians, with Copts and political opponents killed in the streets. This is a coup that increases, rather than decreases, the chance for Egypt to experience real democracy, still slight though it may be.
Hopefully the army will follow up on it’s promise of fair elections. The Green Laser Revolution continues apace…
The lines are drawn, and the curses are cast. Both the people as a whole and the military have proclaimed that Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood must step down. Morsi, in turn, has told them to get stuffed. I’m seeing more sources saying that police are coming over to the protester’s side. Without the military and the police, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood don’t stand a chance to stay in power, though they can still make forcing them out a very bloody affair.
The Egyptian Military has given Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood 48 hours to meet people’s demands or Eddie Murphy goes back to prison the military will step in and impose their own solution.
There have been scattered reporters that some police have gone over to the protesters’ side.
Thanks to Obama’s bungling middle east policy, protesters now hate the U.S. more than ever. “We are very critical of the Obama administration because they have been supporting the Brotherhood like no one has ever supported them.”
When I read these sorts of Egypt is finally ready for Democracy pieces, I want to believe them, but I just don’t. I do believe the Egyptian people are ready to kick the Muslim Brotherhood to the curb, but I’m not yet convinced a majority there (or in any Arab nation) want a constitutional democracy and the rule of law.
In conversations with opposition politicians over the past six months, I have been struck by two things: their vehement hatred of the Brotherhood, and their inability to articulate solutions to the country’s problems. People speak in vague terms about social justice and democratic values. I have yet to meet a politician with a substantive plan to overhaul a system of food and fuel subsidies that eats up almost one third of the budget, or to reform the education sector, or to stimulate foreign investment….
After two years of watching politicians on both sides of the fence squabble and prevaricate and fail to improve their lives, Egyptians appear to be rejecting representative democracy, without having had much of a chance to participate in it. In a country with an increasingly repressive regime and no democratic culture to draw on, protest has become an end in itself—more satisfying than the hard work of governance, organizing, and negotiation. This is politics as emotional catharsis, a way to register rage and frustration without getting involved in the system.
Your basic protest in the middle east doesn’t mean jack compared to guys with guns. But protests this massive change the scale of things. Mohammed Morsi isn’t popular with the army, which he hasn’t yet succeeded in Islamicizing. Protests this big are essentially giving the army the green light to take Morsi out.
Aim for the windows with the Molotovs, people, not the facade!
In addition to be an Islamist scumbag, Morsi has been a manifestly incompetent, nakedly-power-grabbing authoritarian. A lot of protestors are probably opposing the Muslim Brotherhood’s incompetence at governing rather than islamism per se. Michael Totten has noted that liberals (in the classical, Democratic sense) are a distinct minority in Egypt.
Oh, and all that “smart diplomacy” and speech-making from Obama? Thanks to his backing Morsi (with our tax dollars), Egyptians now hate us more than ever.
With demonstrations this massive, there are only three possible endgames in Egypt:
Morsi steps down
The army removes Morsi
Civil war
Possibility #1 is unlikely, and Possibility #3 would likely be a bloodbath to make the Syrian Civil War pale in comparison.
So let’s hope Possibility #2 prevails. But I have no idea how likely that is…
And now the traditional Friday LinkSwarm on Friday!
“Detroit is expecting its creditors to take less than 10 cents on the dollar for having been foolish enough to lend money to the collection of misfits, miscreants, and criminals who govern that poor city….The problem is that the same political leadership that brought Detroit to this sorry pass remains in power…Detroit cannot be trusted with its own money, it cannot be trusted with its creditors’ money, and it certainly cannot be trusted with federal taxpayers’ money.”
“The federal government has been spying and lying. The only comfort is that, apparently, it’s been largely incompetent at both.”
Daily Kos founder joins the chorus of liberal concern trolls saying Republicans had darn well better embrace amnesty or be doomed. It’s like Microsoft telling Goggle what it’s investment strategy should be.
And no, Republicans are not doomed if they don’t vote for amnesty.
In the amnesty proposal, it takes three DUIs before they consider kicking an illegal alien out of the country.
Gender studies professor and FBI most wanted sex offender Walter Lee Williams captured in Mexico. Not to be confused with awesome economics professor Walter E. WIlliams of George Mason University.
USS Enterprise (CVN-65), America’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, takes its final voyage.
Out on my ass? I guarantee it! (Also, I think The Men’s Warehouse’s problems are less “unable to connect with Gen Y” and more “nobody wants to wear a suit unless they have to and fewer and fewer men have to.” Go casual or go extinct.)
Krauthammer: Republicans would be insane to take the “taxes now with a promise to consider cuts later” non-deal Obama is offering.
Especially since Obama’s tax hike “would have reduced the 2012 deficit from $1.10 trillion to $1.02 trillion.”
The national election was disappointing, but here in Texas Republicans continues to make gains. “Overall we have 796 more Republican elected officials in the State of Texas today than we did in 2008.”
Former Texas Democratic congressman Jack brooks has died.
And in case it got lost in the election night news, Steve Stockman, the Republican who retired Brooks in the 1994 election, is returning to congress representing the 36th district.
Displaying a willingness to perceive reality heretofore unguessed at, the Michigan senate passes right-to work legislation. Tomorrow: David Letterman’s Cold Day in Hell Special.
School goes into lockdown because a student brought…a thermometer.
Save the life of a fellow employee at AutoZone? That’s a firing. (Hat tip (last two): Alphecca.)
Once you find out that PSY once sang “Kill those f*cking Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives/Kill those f*cking Yankees who ordered them to torture/Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers/Kill them all slowly and painfully,” suddenly “Gangnam Style” doesn’t seem quite so amusing.