I don’t care how much it costs we need to fund and build these right away.
group of German companies with expertise in parachute systems have joined forces to create the Gryphon Next Generation Parachute System. Designed for high altitude jumps, the Gryphon has a 6-foot wingspan and a glide ratio of 5:1, meaning that a solider can glide up to 30 miles in the air—60 if they go ahead with plans to add a small engine like the one used by Yves Rossy to cross the English Channel.
I’m pretty sure if our enemies saw these badass delta-force type guys flying at them they would surrender due to sheer overwhelming awesome.
Jamie posted this at 2:36 PM EST on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009 as I have seen the future. . .
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The US president, who has seen sharply declining public support for healthcare reform and falling personal approval ratings, will set out his plans in “understandable, clear terms”, Joe Biden, the vice-president, said on Thursday.
Well if Joe Biden says it, it has to be true.
Actually, what will happen is that the president will continue to spout his indecipherable, unconvincing jargon – who ever thought “bending the curve” was a good argument to make to the public? or to anyone? – and will then continue to complain that the people who oppose him are just a bunch of birthers and gun nuts. And instead of making concessions in the bill that actually alleviate the opposition’s concerns, Congressional Democrats will just bitch about how there’s not enough bipartisanship these days (despite the fact that they don’t need Republican support).
We’ve been here before. When Obama needs to make a speech to get himself out of a pickle, he fails. The media will swoon about it as the greatest speech ever – if his speech defending Jeremiah Wright was the greatest speech since Lincoln’s Cooper Union address, I reckon Wednesday’s speech will be hailed as the greatest utterance by a human since the very first time a cro-magnon made a grunt sound – but those who actually pay attention, and even those who passingly care, will agree that the greatest orator of the last billion years has failed once again to make his case.
Is this guy still president? This is getting too predictable. I’m going to bed now, and I’m going to set my alarm for 2012.
Apollo posted this at 1:49 AM EDT on Friday, September 4th, 2009 as Barack Obama Couldn't Persuade a Bear to Crap in the Woods, CHANGE!, I have seen the future. . .
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Byron York is being optimistic:
It’s a possibility many Republicans speak of only in whispers and Democrats are just now beginning to face. After passionate and contentious fights over health care, the environment, and taxes, could Democrats lose big — really big — in next year’s elections?
Ask them about it, and many Democrats will point to the continued personal popularity of Barack Obama. But that’s not the story. “I think what’s going to happen is Obama’s going to be fine, and the Democrats in Congress are going to get their a**** kicked in 2010,” says one Democratic strategist who prefers not to be named. “This is following a curve like the Clinton years: take on really controversial things early, fail, or succeed partially, ask Democrats to take really tough votes, and then lose. A lot of guys are going to get beat, but the president has time to recover.”
Most Republican hope focuses on the House of Representatives, but even there they have a huge job ahead. Democrats control 256 seats, and Republicans 178. Forty seats would have to change hands for Republicans to take charge.
On the other hand, 52 seats turned over when the GOP won the House in 1994.
The historic pattern hasn’t been that one party beats the other with better ideas; rather, it’s that one party self-destructs and the other waltzes in. Thus the collapsing Great Society lead to Nixon’s Silent Majority, which collapsed under Watergate to lead to Carter, etc.
But when the other party takes control of Congress prematurely, it’s less the kiss of death than a mouth-to-mouth resuscitation for the beleagured president. In 1946, Truman’s Democrats collapsed, and Republicans took control of the 80th congress. They overrode his vetoes and, ironically, saved his presidency. Truman bounced back in 1948. Similarly, in 1994, Clinton’s Democrats were decimated, but Clinton himself was able to bounce back in 1996.
In 1978, however, Republicans made small gains, and Jimmy Carter collapsed on his own. The right likes to tell itself that Reagan won in 1980 because he was all that was right and good; I suspect but cannot prove that he won because Carter was collapsing and Reagan was able to convince just over 50% of the nation that he would do a better job.
By all means, the right needs to generate good new ideas, but they’re not going to win on them; the left will lose.
Hubbard posted this at 10:56 AM EDT on Friday, August 14th, 2009 as I have seen the future. . ., Politics, The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
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Mark Levin is the author of the #2 book on Amazon, the host of a popular radio show, and a contributor to NRO’s the Corner. After Rush and Dick Cheney, he’s probably the most important conservative thinker today.
He is also a human cancer:
CALLER: I just wanna say, Obama is a lot smarter than you folks give him credit for. You guys were on a roll, I have to admit, with all those tea parties. Everything was rolling along, the Republicans were gaining momentum. And he managed to change your entire conversational focus. And you let those three hundred thousand people —
LEVIN: My God. He’s so smart. His own party voted against him on Guantanamo Bay. How stupid was that, Cindy? His own party refused to fund the closing of Guantanamo Bay.
CALLER: Yeah but you know he can just move those people over here anyway. He’s already doing it with the one guy.
LEVIN: Yeah, sure, he can do whatever he wants. Let me ask you a question. Why do you hate this country?
CALLER: No, I love this country.
LEVIN: (angrily shouting) I SAID WHY DO YOU HATE MY COUNTRY! WHY DO YOU HATE MY CONSTITUTION? WHY DO YOU HATE MY DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE?
You just said it. He can blow off Congress. He can do whatever he wants, right?
CALLER: Well, he seems to, he just moved (inaudible).
LEVIN: Answer me this, are you a married woman? Yes or no?
CALLER: Yes.
LEVIN: Well I don’t know why your husband doesn’t put a gun to his temple. Get the hell out of here.
We will not win so long as this kind of rhetoric is tolerated; on the off chance that I am wrong about that, will will not have deserved to win. Levin’s bullying and tantrums — here’s another examples — toward anyone who disagrees with him are more emblematic of the Savage Nation than the conservative movement and certainly unworthy of an institution like National Review. For God’s sake, don’t buy his books, don’t buy products from his sponsors, write National Review and ask them to stop buying his writing. I am.
Substance matters. So does tone.
Tom posted this at 11:55 PM EDT on Friday, May 22nd, 2009 as Conservatism, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, I have seen the future. . .
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Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalized for pancreatic cancer (H/T):
A CAT scan revealed a tumor measuring about 1 centimeter across the center of the pancreas, the court said.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly cancers: Nearly 38,000 cases a year are diagnosed and overall, fewer than 5 percent survive five years.
The reason: Fewer than one in 10 cases are diagnosed at an early stage—like Ginsburg’s appears to be—before the cancer has begun spreading through the abdomen and beyond. That’s because early pancreatic cancer produces few symptoms other than vague indigestion.
Even when caught early, surgery for pancreatic cancer is arduous. Doctors typically remove parts of the pancreas, stomach and intestines. Radiation and chemotherapy are common after surgery.
I’ll be keeping Judge Ginsburg in my prayers, but something tells me Obama will be appointing his first Supreme Court Justice soon.
Hubbard posted this at 3:49 PM EST on Thursday, February 5th, 2009 as I have seen the future. . ., The Law Is An Ass--An Idiot
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Over at The New Nixon, some anecdotes about transitioning from the presidency. My favorite:
Long after nightfall on January 20, 1969, Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson arrived at their 330-acre Texas ranch. LBJ had been an ex-President for just a few hours. Throughout the day friends had gathered – first at Andrews Air Force Base, then at Bergstrom Air Force Base in Texas. They showed up to say thank you to the man who had ascended to the presidency in those chaotic Dallas moments more than five years before – and who less than a year before had pulled himself out of the race for a final term in the White House.
One of the first tell-tale signs that life was going to be comparatively perk-free was when they came upon their massive collection of luggage that had been left in the carport that evening, with no one around to carry the bags. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson laughed. Ladybird then uttered a phrase that captures what all former presidents probably come to understand as they take their first steps as former presidents:
“The coach has turned back into the pumpkin and all the mice have run away.”
Read and reflect. Sic transit gloria mundi.
Hubbard posted this at 8:32 PM EST on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 as Excruciatingly Correct Behavior, I have seen the future. . .
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$35 oil! I’m calling $25 by April, if not sooner.
Apollo posted this at 10:17 PM EST on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 as I have seen the future. . .
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From Rasmussen (H/T):
Sixty-nine percent (69%) of Republican voters say Alaska Governor Sarah Palin helped John McCain’s bid for the presidency, even as news reports surface that some McCain staffers think she was a liability.
Only 20% of GOP voters say Palin hurt the party’s ticket, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey. Six percent (6%) say she had no impact, and five percent (5%) are undecided.
Ninety-one percent (91%) of Republicans have a favorable view of Palin, including 65% who say their view is Very Favorable. Only eight percent (8%) have an unfavorable view of her, including three percent (3%) Very Unfavorable.
When asked to choose among some of the GOP’s top names for their choice for the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, 64% say Palin. The next closest contenders are two former governors and unsuccessful challengers for the presidential nomination this year — Mike Huckabee of Arkansas with 12% support and Mitt Romney of Massachusetts with 11%.
Three other sitting governors — Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, Charlie Crist of Florida and Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota — all pull low single-digit support.
A common theme I heard in the last several weeks is how many conservative leaning independents were turned off when McCain picked Palin. My view is that we need to see how Palin governs Alaska for the next 4 years, assuming she’s reelected. What say the rest of the paupers? (Tom, Jamie, please put down the hemlock. . .)
Hubbard posted this at 12:47 PM EST on Friday, November 7th, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, I have seen the future. . .
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Barack Obama has picked Rahm Emanuel for White House Chief of Staff (H/T). The good: Emanuel is a free trader, a friend of Joe Lieberman, and fights regularly with Howard Dean. The bad: he’s a steely partisan of the Untouchables school (”He pulls a knife, you pull a gun; he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue”).
An old saw of politics is that personnel is policy. For example, Bush went from the smart and tough AG Ashcroft to the foolish and weak Alberto Gonzales. The White House Chief of Staff is effectively co-president, and Obama has picked a pitbull who’ll fight Congress, so Obama won’t be a rubberstamp for Pelosi or Dean. It seems like a smart choice. The danger is that Emanuel tends to leave bruises whenever he gets involved in an issue. If I recall correctly, he was the staffer who told someone that if Senator Moynihan (then chair of the Senate Finance Committee) got in their way, they’d roll over him. This turned a shrewd and powerful politician from an ally to a critic.
The right needs to get over Tuesday quickly. Obama’s choice tells us that he’s going to play hardball.
Hubbard posted this at 5:14 PM EST on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 as I have seen the future. . ., Politics
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Jonah Goldberg peers into a crystal ball and sees 2012 with President Obama:
Indeed, the overconfidence of Congressional Democrats posed another major challenge to the Obama presidency. During the 2008 election, Obama’s conservative critics had long complained that the then-freshman senator had little to no record of standing up the leftwing base of his party in part, they argued, because he himself was much more leftwing than he had let on.
Whatever the truth of that, what is not contested is that the Congressional Progressive Caucus — the largest partisan bloc in the Congress when Mr. Obama was elected — believed that the new president was “one of us” according to many sources contacted for this article.
The CPC, colloquially known as the “big swinging caucus” after an unfortunate joke by then-Republican Minority Leader John Boehner after a scandal involving Rep. Barney Frank (see side story), pushed Barack Obama on a wide array of fronts: they demanded very large cuts in the military budget, a sweeping government expansion into the role of healthcare, and in a move that experts agree caused the Wall Street Panic of 2010, they persuaded Mr. Obama to make the government’s partial ownership of the remaining “Big Five” banks permanent. Representatives Frank and Charlie Rangel argued that the stakes, bought by the Bush treasury department, in the banks provided, in Frank’s words, a “once in a lifetime opportunity to inject some social justice into the capitalist system.” Or as Senator Jesse Jackson Jr. said, “if we’ve got them by the b***s already, why let go?”
Enjoy.
Hubbard posted this at 10:04 AM EST on Sunday, November 2nd, 2008 as I have seen the future. . ., There Is Only One God And Jonah Goldberg Is His Prophet
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Over at The American Spectator, Peter Ferrara bloviates on The End of Prosperity:
Just two weeks ago, a book on economic policy was released that will be a classic for the ages. Entitled The End of Prosperity, by Art Laffer, Steve Moore, and Peter J. Tanous, the book explains in full detail the economic disaster that will befall America if it takes a sharp left turn to neo-socialism under the leadership of the far left President Barack Obama, the ultraleft Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid with 60 liberal Democrat Senators, and their pal the ultraliberal Howard Dean heading the Democrat party.
Indeed, one of the insights of the book is that a major factor already tanking the stock market and leading foreign capital to flee America is the threat of the economic policies promised by Obama. Obama proposes increases in every major federal tax, on savers, investors, employers, small business, big business, and anyone who would start a business. Obama also promises to add additional federal spending of almost $1.5 trillion over the next four years, including a new global war on poverty in which Obama would tax Americans and send the money to the UN to spend worldwide (already introduced by Obama in legislation). That would be on top of all the spending increases already scheduled for our exploding entitlements and other programs. Obama also promises a massive increase in regulatory controls, even though government regulation is already estimated to cost America over $1 trillion per year, about $8,000 in lost output for every U.S. household. Then there is Obama’s attack on free trade and promises of protectionist trade policies that contributed so much to the Great Depression.
As the authors show, these retrograde economic policies are intellectually indefensible. They do not offer forward looking change, but would take us back to the policies of the disastrous 1970s and even worse 1930s.
The article, alas, is a massive burst of hyperventillation (whether the hysteria is Ferrara’s or the book under review is an open question). As a general rule, one need not take apocalyptic predictions seriously. Contra Rachel Carson, the Spring is not Silent; contra Jim Jones, one need not drink the Kool-Aid. There’s much not to like about a potential Obama administration, but predicting stagflation and another Great Depression? It’s possible but improbable—and when it doesn’t happen, the right’s good ideas will be discredited.
Economic conservatives should take heart for a few reasons. First, as Adam Smith once observed, “there is a great deal of ruin in a nation.” When a decently functioning nation (which America is, despite our occasional gripes) elects hacks, they have to work hard to seriously ruin it. For all his speeches, Obama hasn’t run anything; Pelosi lost control of her caucus in the bailout debacle; Reid is hamstrung by the Senate filibuster rules. The Founders tried to make it hard to pass legislation, and they succeeded. There’s no FDR-Rayburn combo waiting for us, nor is Obama a legislative genius as LBJ was. If anything, Obama is more like Jimmy Carter.
2008 is probably going to be a bad year for the right. But even if everything goes wrong, it won’t be the end of the world.
Hubbard posted this at 3:17 PM EDT on Wednesday, October 8th, 2008 as Buffoon Watch, I have seen the future. . .
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Sarah Palin plainly beat Joe Biden. I recognized it as it happened. In Frank Luntz’s group, everybody but one was moved toward John McCain.
This is the greatest, most important vice presidential nomination ever. She will be president.
That is all.
Apollo posted this at 9:48 PM EDT on Thursday, October 2nd, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . ., Uncategorized
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John McCain is an excellent example of a La Rochefoucauld maxim: Only great men are entitled to great flaws. Were the election held today, I would be voting for McCain because Obama is worse; it is unlikely but possible that I’ll change my mind. Much as I like Sarah Palin, she’ll only be the vice president; for all we know, President McCain will send her to the funerals of foreign dignitaries before the guest of honor is actually deceased. (Call that the Dan Quayle option.)
Russ seems to be feeling a strange new respect for McCain. I suspect it will only last should Obama win; should McCain win, we right-wingers will soon enough find reason to tear out hair by the fistful.
Some time ago, Andrew Ferguson summarized how McCain works:
McCain’s method in domestic matters no less than in foreign affairs is military: He surveys a set of facts, identifies a villain, fixes him with his steely gaze, and then goes after him. . . . More recently, he has championed a “patients’ bill of rights” to tighten regulations on the HMOs, insurance companies, and employers he considers to be stingy with health benefits. Pharmaceutical companies should be reined in, he’s said, because they’re the “bad guys.”
What’s unsettling is that you can never predict who the next bad guy will be. No consistent economic principles can be extracted from McCain’s grab bag of policy positions, and no amount of textbook baloney about the free market, deregulation, and limited government will deter him from bringing his malefactors to justice. McCain’s economics aren’t ideological but improvisational—a campaign with shifting fronts, running on indignation. And a very large number of voters, probably a majority, will find this approach appealing because they don’t buy all this textbook baloney about the free market and limited government either. When President McCain finds his villain and pursues him however he can, they will likely cheer their president and egg him on—unless, of course, he fixes his steely gaze on them.
What enemies will President McCain go after? Russia? China? Pakistan? Oil companies? Insurance companies? Mortgage lenders? Banks? In each of those cases, there’s plenty of things that should be changed—and plenty of problems that could be aggravated.
Obama, alas, is a go-along-to-get-along hack. He was a cog in Chicago’s Daley Machine, and he picked a cog in the Washington insiders circuit, Joe Biden, for his VP. Given how much fighting the next president is going to have to do—with Congress, with mortgage companies, with Islamofascists, with resurgent Russia, with conniving China—we are in a unusually bad time to have a presidential hack. McCain’s selection of Palin shows that he plans to pick fights, but will he pick the right fights?
So, as Buckley once prefered Eisenhower, I prefer McCain. I would love to be pleasantly surprised by President McCain, but suspect that we’ll have lots to criticize about him once he starts governing. For now, go McCain-Palin.
Hubbard posted this at 8:10 PM EDT on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 as Audacity of Hype, I have seen the future. . ., The Past Is Never Dead--It Isn't Even Past
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I’m sort of freaked out by these shoes:
Dorothy posted this at 8:25 AM EDT on Wednesday, August 13th, 2008 as Brave New Worlds, I have seen the future. . .
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