The American Spectator

What Barry lacks is not intelligence or the right kind of intelligence, or IQ or even a kind of common sense. What Barry lacks are two old fashioned words long out of common use that far too many people today also lack. In his inadequacy he is not alone and therein lies partial explanation of Obama’s rise to power and now his blundering. But it is true I think that liberals are particularly susceptible to this self-inflicted deficiency. What Barry wants is wisdom and humility. One cannot be had without the other. A sense of the limitations of human understanding and capability, not the least one’s own, and the commensurate understanding of what can, and should, be done.
— Mark Shepler
Jupiter, Florida

An old Yiddish expression clearly fits President Spock: he is an ass ladened with books.
— I.M. Kessel

Spock is nothing but a metaphor for sociopath.
— Steven Shaver

BAILING OUT THE MEDIA
Re: Quin Hillyer’s Media Belles at the Ball:

There was dull old me, wondering why progressives want our rulers [formerly “our government”] to save the “main stream media” from extinction. They certainly never tried to prevent the extinction of other great news organizations of the past.

Where were they, I ask, when Life, Look, The Saturday Evening Post, and other great news magazines were in desperate need of a bailout?

Where when the telegraph stopped transmitting the dits and dahs of important news?

Or when the Pony Express was riding off into the sunset?

Or when the Town Crier lost his voices?

Our world is less — what? — charming for their demise, all, but progressives never tried to save them.

Of course, those ancient media forms never tried to save the political left, either.

Never mind. I get it now.
— A.C Santore

NOT SO DYNAMIC
Re: Joseph Lawler’s The Jobless Recovery and Its Structures:

You assert that the “labor market becomes more complex, more dynamic…” every day. Bureau of Labor Statistics don’t bear this out. The job separations rate (quits, layoffs, discharges as % of employment) went from 4.3 in January 2001 to 3.9 in December 2002 to 3.2 in October 2009. Gross job gains decreased 33% from Qt. 1 1998 to Qt. 1 2009. This is the metamorphosis into a less dynamic economy.
— Martin Vaala

Is there really a recovery? Depending on the Obama official you listen to the economy is recovering or isn’t. The observable evidence is that the economy is on the cusp of a double-dip recession as unemployment lingers at near depression level highs, consumer spending is anemic (compared to late 2007 when the recession allegedly began), small banks are folding, foreclosures are growing, the credit crunch continues, Democrats behave as Democrats (i.e., tax and spend), and the Obama administration is doing everything it can to increase its power at the expense of American’s Constitutional freedoms and rights.