The American Spectator

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Current Wisdom

(Page 2 of 3)

(April 27, 2009)

New York Times

Is this another lunatic squawk lifted from the neurotic correspondence page of the revered Times? Not at all—it is the Times’s schoolgirl columnist, Maureen Dowd, the one who writes books about her failed love life. Nothing can be done to help her:

Cheney’s numskull ideas—he still loves torture (dubbed “13th-century” stuff by Bob Woodward), Gitmo and scaring the bejesus out of Americans— are not only fixed, they’re jejune. He has no coherent foreign policy point of view. He still doesn’t fathom that his brutish invasion of Iraq unbalanced that part of the world, empowered Iran and was a force multiplier for Muslims who hate America. He left our ports unsecured, our food supply unsafe, the Taliban rising and Osama on the loose. No matter if or when terrorists attack here—and they’re on their own timetable, not a partisan red/blue state timetable—Cheney will be deemed the primary one who made America more vulnerable.

(May 13, 2009)

Wealth of Nations
(Newsweek Blog)

Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh, another of American journalism’s men who rose without a trace, demonstrated that he weathered 25 years of unprecedented economic growth and thought it came from the Fairy Godmother:

If the Republican Party had only followed his [Jack Kemp’s] advice about reaching out to the inner cities and underclass—and ignored his happy talk about supply-side economics— the GOP might not be in nearly the fix it is today.…[Kemp] was a classic case of an amateur econo-cultist whose understanding never reached quite deep enough. In mid-life, when he decided to switch from sports to politics, Kemp became enamored of simplistic free-market ideas, in particular a toxic combination of Arthur Laffer and Ayn Rand. He then sold another gifted amateur, Ronald Reagan, on the idea that drastic tax cuts would so stimulate the economy that the ensuing growth would more than make up for the loss in revenues....The damage was done, and thanks in part to Jack Kemp the supply-side fantasy endured, producing the vast Reagan deficits.

(May 4, 2009)

The Nation

The voyeurs at the Nation protest the Obama administration’s latest efforts to prevent them from seeing healthy young men in their underpants:

No one expected Obama to reveal all the secrets of the temple when he became president. But Americans did expect him to favor transparency and accountability. Unfortunately, with each passing week he stumbles deeper into the thicket of secrecy he promised to clear away.

The administration’s reversal of its agreement with the ACLU to release photos of detainee abuse by military and intelligence agents is unsettling and wrongheaded.

(June 8, 2009)

The Stephanie Miller Show