Quick Roundup 536

Time and Internet access remain at a premium for me and will stay that way for another couple of days. Nevertheless, I have enough material for a roundup post...

New Book on Neoconservatism

Via email, I have learned that Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea, by C. Bradley Thompson (with Yaron Brook), has some out and is available for sale at Amazon. Here is an excerpt from Gideon Reich's five-star customer review.

[This] book demonstrates that the neocons are in theory and practice opposed to the ideas of the American founding, including individual rights, limited government, and laissez-faire capitalism. Instead the neoconservatives support a kind of "soft-despotism" that is more akin to fascism than Americanism. Highly recommended, particularly for those who do support the real principles of Americanism!

My reading hopper is rather full, but this will definitely land in it.

Taking "Me, too!" to a New Level

Ayn Rand frequently and correctly lambasted Republicans for paying lip-service to free market principles, but, in the end, acting like the Democrats. In the Florida governor's race, Bill McCollum is taking this to unprecedented depths.

I think a lot of the dirt on [Florida gubernatorial hopeful] Rick Scott is really overblown.

Here's the gist of the major attack, though there are others: After Clintoncare failed, the Clinton Administration started getting extremely specific about the interpretation and application of over 100,000 pages of Medicare regulations.

Then the Clintons started picking off, one by one, every health care provider that fought them. Rick Scott's Columbia/HCA received one of the, if not the, largest fines in history for fraud.

It is beyond obscene that McCollum is using something like this to tar Scott as a "fraud." (HT: Dismuke)

Here's my take ...

... on the latest dishonest argument against gays in the military that I have encountered.

"Plug the damn hole," gushed the President.

If there's one good thing about the BP oil spill in the Gulf, it's that we are seeing, over all manner of national media, that Emperor Wannabe Obama has no clothes:

With the realization that images of spoiled beaches and oil-covered animals are likely to become much worse in the coming weeks, the administration is torn between a political imperative -- that it take a hard line with the oil giant -- and a practical one -- that it has no choice but to rely on the company to stop the flow.

...

But when Coast Guard Adm. Thad W. Allen, who is directing the government's disaster response, was asked about [interior Secretary Ken] Salazar's comment [about "pushing them out"] during a briefing Monday at the White House, he dismissed it as "more of a metaphor." Allen added: "To push BP out of the way would raise the question of: Replace them with what?"

...

"Plug the damn hole," Obama told them.

...

"If you could control an oil spill with lawyers and regulation-writers, and by signing papers and obtaining court injunctions . . . then maybe the U.S. government could do something," said Byron W. King, an energy analyst at Agora Financial. "But really, Uncle Sam has almost no institutional ability to control the oil spill. For that, you need people with technical authority, technical skill and firms with industrial capabilities."

That last paragraph is probably the most intelligent comment I have seen about this situation so far. (HT: Dismuke)

-- CAV