You better pay your students loans or the Department of Education is sending in the boots.

Jonah Goldberg saves me the time by burying Friedman in his shallow pool of pop intellectualism.

Much of the scarcity of resources we have in the United States isn’t the result of actual physical scarcity. It’s the result of man-made scarcity. Fossil fuels aren’t really so scarce in absolute terms, but in legal terms. That may not be the case in some parts of the developing world. But his column is aimed at people in America who irresponsibly want to live as lavishly as Tom Friedman.

I must admit that Tom Friedman annoys me. There are plenty of shallow thinkers in the world, but none are taken quite as seriously as this clown.

Government Intervention: For some odd reason the Senate voted to let the Federal Reserve curb the fees that stores pay financial institutions when a customer swipes a debit card. The most startling question I have is why the government is getting involved in this situation. That amount of government regulation in every facet of our lives is maddening. The banks will just pass the cost on to us through some other mechanism, and if they can’t they’ll go bankrupt. If the banks go bankrupt then the government will just bail them out. What a country!

The Liberal Loving Press: Rep. Anthony Weiner has been in the news lately, but you wouldn’t really know if you read Newsweek or Time. The two liberal trade rags dedicated covers and page after page of analysis to Rep. Mark Foley’s indiscretions a few years ago. However, news about Democrats just isn’t quite as sexy for liberal journalists. Can there be any doubt the mainstream press is biased?

The Department of Education or Secret Police: First off all, the Department of Education is a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars and it should be abolished immediately. In its 30-year existence there hasn’t been a substantial improvement in public education in the United States. What are we funding? Oh yeah, SWAT teams.

The resident, Kenneth Wright, does not have a criminal record and he had no reason to believe why what he thought was a S.W.A.T team would be breaking down his door at 6 in the morning. “I look out of my window and I see 15 police officers,” Wright said. As Wright came downstairs in his boxer shorts, he said the officers barged through his front door. Wright said an officer grabbed him by the neck and led him outside on his front lawn.

What is the Wright family crime? Apparently Mrs. Wright hasn’t paid her student loans. Let me get this straight: we’re living in the bailout age where people walk away from their homes and cars, banks and automakers are collecting cash from the government, and the Department of Education is sending SWAT teams in to arrest people for defunct student loans?

There has to be some missing information in this case, but it’s going to take a lot to convince me this was a necessary act of police force. I imagine there will be plenty of outrage about this act by the Department of Education; however, there needs to be serious talk about eliminating this cabinet level department.

No Joy in Mudville? Maybe it wasn't so bad after all.

Today I’m writing from the Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina. My wife’s surgery went well this morning and she’s resting in the ICU. There’s still a long way to go on this journey, but this is one step in the right direction. Now it’s time to flush…

Philosopher King: The Philosophical Left is simply too smart for its own good. Obama’s presidency is far from over, but typically that caveat is used to stop people from being too critical of the administration. When Jonah Goldberg isn’t linking to The Daily Plunge he writes for The National Review. He points out the beyond self-parody musings of James T. Kloppenberg, who insists that President Obama has embraced open-minded experimentation and continued debate. Huh? We’re all shocked. So is Jonah Goldberg…

I just wonder where that Barack Obama has been for the last 20-odd months, because the guy in the Oval Office has been talking endlessly about how the “time for debate is over,” how he doesn’t want to hear from his opponents, whom he now calls “our enemies,” how he got all of his policies right, how any statement of disagreement is merely a “talking point,” or perhaps the irritable mental gesture of Americans who are so frightened they cling to their boomsticks and sky god, or simply reject “facts and science.”

Anyone who wants to insist that Obama has been “open to debate” or ideas outside the liberal mainstream is living in an alternate reality. As far as Kloppenberg is concerned he’s living in an alternate philosophy. I always find it fascinating when seemingly intelligent people make ridiculous arguments. Mankind is just as ignorant and full of itself as it was 600 years ago. People will believe anything if the argument is convincing enough.

The State of Political Discourse: Tolerance on the left is in short supply. It’s one thing to disagree, but now everyone to the right of Joseph Lieberman is an enemy of the state. It’s okay to make fun of Christians, Jesus, and any politician, but it’s beyond the pale to point out the the terrorists of 9/11 were Muslim. However, it’s perfectly fine to mention that a Rand Paul supporter attacked someone. Here’s a question for debate… What’s more of an isolated incident? Muslim extremism or Tea Party extremism?

Joy Behar stormed off the set of The View when Bill O’Rielly mentioned the religion of the 9/11 terrorists. However, the respected Behar called Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle a bitch for sending her flowers. Angle’s crime is wanting to enforce the United States immigration laws. Most Americans would respect this point of view, but today’s left has no room for disagreement. You know things are bad when the President of the United States is urging ethnic groups to punish enemies. President Bush is looking more and more like a pushover every day Obama is in office.

Never mind that von Brunn isn’t a member of the far right. Nor is he a member of the far left, as some on the right are claiming. He’s not a member of anything other than the crazy caucus. Von Brunn’s True North is conspiratorial anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. He’s not a member of the Christian Right. In fact, he denounces Christianity — just as Hitler did — as a Jewish plot against paganism and Western vigor. Nor is he a capitalist. Again, just as Hitler did, he hails socialism as the solution to the West’s problems.
Still, if we are going to play this game where we take the words of politicians and pundits, compare them to the words of murderers and psychopaths, and then assign blame accordingly, then let’s blame the New York Times, Chris Matthews, left-wing blogs everywhere, and the academics who penned The Israel Lobby (which blames a fifth column of Israel loyalists for our troubles).

I don’t really care if leftist blogs like the Daily Kos can’t see the forest for the trees. Those are outlets that kneel at the altar of Left. The problem is that mainstream news outlets are stuck using outdated templates.
The first story I read about this shooting on CNN had already labeled the psycho as a member of the extreme-right. Liberals have been successful at painting the “far right” as offshoots of Hitler for far too long when the truth is a lot more complicated. The political spectrum is certainly a lot more diverse that far right and far left. I won’t hold my breath waiting for educated news because the press is invested in this narrative.

Putting aside other objections to that nomenclature, if von Brunn is a member of the far right, then it would be helpful and journalistically responsible if the press would start calling Rush Limbaugh, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, et al., moderates and centrists. That won’t happen, because the whole point of these exercises is to paint the Right as an undifferentiated blob of evil.

Team Obama was winging it when it declared the stimulus would “save or create” 2.5 million, then three million, then 3.7 million, and then four million new jobs. These were arbitrary and erratic numbers, and they knew there’s no way to count “saved” jobs. Americans, being commonsensical, will focus on Mr. Obama’s promise to “create” jobs. It’s highly unlikely that more than 180,000 jobs will be created each month by the end of next year. The precise, state-by-state job numbers the administration used to sell the stimulus are likely to come back to haunt them as well.

This isn’t the end of the world, but with a crisis on Wall Street the perception of competence is vital. If Bush would have had a string of appointment disasters like Obama has experience the perception would have been “well, Bush is stupid.” So what’s the excuse for Obama? Why are so many in the press giving the president a free ride when the only legislative accomplishment so far is a stimulus bill no one likes? Johah Goldberg touches on this phenomena.

Two weeks ago — half of Obama’s presidency so far — there was a lot of talk of Obama as a “chess master.” Bob Herbert: “Mr. Obama is like a championship chess player, always several moves ahead of friend and foe alike.” Few can hold a candle to Mr. Herbert’s facility with clichés. But I think this is a real dynamic. No, I don’t mean that Obama is a chess master, but that some of his fans cannot tolerate the conflict between their opinion of the man and his obvious mistakes and short comings. This is the flipside to political paranoia; the belief that “your guy” can do no wrong.

While the press may try to isolate the president from criticism the American people will only be fooled for so long. Obama’s approval rating over at Rasmussen(the poll that nailed the election) has dropped to 58%. That’s only a few points higher than Bush when he was reelected in 2004. Every day that passes the economy becomes a referendum on Obama. The president cannot declare war on Wall Street and hope to revive the economy. If investors decide to hold on to their money and wait for a friendlier administration things could get even worse. I don’t think that will happen, but what if Obama truly is in over his head?