Combs Spouts Off

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Archive for October, 2008

An American Carol is fun

Posted by Richard on October 10, 2008

Miss me? Sorry for the week-long hiatus. I've been sick, followed by not-so-sick but busy. Haven't been in the mood to spend much time on the computer or paying attention to the news.

Before getting sick (actually, as I was getting sick), I saw An American Carol and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is one of those movies that critics hate, but audiences enjoy. It's flawed and uneven, for sure, but there are plenty of laughs. If you liked David Zucker's other zany stuff (Airplane, the multiple Naked Guns, Scary Movie 3/4), you'll like this one, too. 

Robert Davi and Kelsey Grammer were especially good. Kevin Farley's performance, although adequate, kept reminding me that his late brother could have played the part much better. Geoffrey Arend and Serdar Kalsin, who played the two reluctant terrorists, were great, too, and there were lots of fun cameos (like Dennis Hopper as a judge shooting zombie ACLU lawyers).

Go see it — I bet you'll have a good time. It's definitely a patriotic message movie, and it hits you over the head — but they're using a rubber chicken. 

On a different subject, I didn't watch the last debate, and from what I've heard, I'm glad. Ted Nugent characterized McCain's debate performance — and pretty much his whole campaign — as "tepid." That strikes me as apt.

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How I know Palin delivered

Posted by Richard on October 2, 2008

In my not-so-humble opinion, Palin won big. As Vodkapundit noted several times during his drunkblogging, Palin was especially good when she was "off-script." On energy in particular, she articulated McCain's position far better than McCain has. And she challenged Obama's and Biden's records much more effectively than McCain has.

But I realize it's hard for me to be objective about this, especially when I disliked almost everything Biden had to say. And I heard him say numerous things that were flat-out false.

So I'm looking for some objective standard by which to gauge the outcome, and I think I've got one. I watched on NBC. Before the debate, Brian Williams and his talking heads all agreed that this debate was an historic and highly important event.

After the debate, they all agreed that Palin did quite well, that neither candidate made any big mistakes — and that it really doesn't matter because no one cares about vice presidential debates, and it will be completely forgotten in a few days.

If that's the consensus spin of the mainstream media, then I'm pretty certain that Palin did really, really well. Because if she hadn't done well, you can be sure they'd still be talking about how important that debate was.

UPDATE: Was Ifill fair? Well, she wasn't as unfair as she might have been, and I suspect that's because of all the criticism that followed revelations about her upcoming pro-Obama book. But a lot of the questions she asked and the way she asked them made it easier for Biden to answer than for Palin. And she sure gave Biden the last word a lot.

UPDATE 2: According to Ace of Spades, I was right about Biden saying "numerous things that were flat-out false." He enumerated 14 specific instances. And he didn't even mention Biden's huge flubs regarding Article 1 of the Constitution (it's about the legislative branch, not the executive branch) and the role of the Vice President (the veep doesn't just preside over the Senate when there is a tie vote; that's just the only time the veep votes with the Senate).

UPDATE 3: There was one moment when Biden connected with me: near the end, when he recalled losing his wife and daughter (in an automobile accident) and worrying about whether one of his sons would survive. He became genuinely choked up, and my heart went out to him.

But that was the only moment during the debate that Biden seemed like a genuine human being instead of a Washington politico-bot.

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The bailout has become an abomination

Posted by Richard on October 2, 2008

The Senate passed a new version of the Wall Street bailout bill designed to attract more House votes. I desperately hope this monstrous, pork-laden abomination fails. I won't expound further because Bob Bidinotto has already explained why better than I could: 

The original administration-backed "rescue package" bill was three pages.

The failed House version had ballooned to 110 pages.

Now, the Senate has expanded it to a 450+ page behemoth, laden with new pork — including provisions completely unrelated to the "financial crisis," such as help for rural schools, disaster aid, and a provision "demanding that insurance companies provide coverage for mental health treatment—such as hospitalization—on parity with physical illnesses." This will include treatment for various "addictions" (drugs? alcohol? gambling? sex? the Internet? cell phones? conservative talk radio?).

The initial five-year estimate of costs for just the mental-health provisions is $3.8 billion, but as we know about all government programs, that's just a chump-change opener. Traditional medical care has been tied, however tenuously, to actual, demonstrable physical maladies. But given the politicized and ever-expanding "mental illness" racket — in which the psychiatric industry discovers, concocts, and arbitrarily defines new "mental diseases" almost daily — this provision alone is absolutely destined to fund an explosive government-underwritten growth industry that will gobble up countless more billions of taxpayer dollars every year. But hell, why not? Now that the employees of banks, investment houses, insurance companies, and Detroit automakers are to be collecting their paychecks (directly or indirectly) from the taxpayers, I suppose it's only fitting to include shrinks. Perhaps they can help all the other groveling beggars restore their battered self-images.

Folks, it's time, more than ever, to kill this sucker. Get on the phone and send your emails to the House of Representatives, the only place where there's a prayer of stopping this statist monster.

In typical Bidinotto fashion, multiple updates follow, and you really need to read them all. The mental-health provision is only one small part of the steaming pile of crap that fills this bill: "disaster relief," rum production, mine safety, Indian tribes, railroads, auto race tracks, wool production … it goes on and on and on…

This bill is so vile and disgusting that it makes me wish the original 3-pager had passed. I can only hope that enough members of the House are equally disgusted, and this monstrosity is terminated with extreme prejudice, as it deserves. 

Bidinotto concluded: 

Now ask yourself: What in hell does all that inserted stuff have to do with a "financial rescue package" for banks and financial institutions during an alleged time of crisis?

This pork-and-special-interest-laden bailout bill is a complete fraud on and rip-off of the taxpayer, and it's high time for us to rise up and demand that the House vote it down.

I have never before used this blog to urge readers to contact their congressmen, but this bill will be a fatal game-changer for the future of America's free-market system. We have to fight this, or, starting next year, we and our kids will live in a very, very different America than the one we grew up in.

If you don't know how to contact your congressman, go here.

Then DO IT. Like, now. 

All I can say is I agree. Completely. And angrily. Do like he says — now! 

This piece of shit must die!

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Ifill in the tank for Obama

Posted by Richard on October 1, 2008

PBS anchor Gwen Ifill will be the moderator for the one and only vice presidential debate. With the assent of both campaigns, she's been given free rein by the debate commission to run the debate as she pleases. But would the McCain-Palin campaign have agreed if they'd been better informed about Ifill? From today's Michelle Malkin column (emphasis added):

In an imaginary world where liberal journalists are held to the same standards as everyone else, Ifill would be required to make a full disclosure at the start of the debate. She would be required to turn to the cameras and tell the national audience that she has a book coming out on Jan. 20, 2009 — a date that just happens to coincide with the inauguration of the next president of the United States.

The title of Ifill's book? "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." Nonpartisan my foot.

Random House, her publisher, is already busy hyping the book with YouTube clips of Ifill heaping praise on her subjects, including Obama and Obama-endorsing Mass. Gov. Deval Patrick. …

Ifill and her publisher are banking on an Obama/Biden win to buoy her book sales. The moderator expected to treat both sides fairly has grandiosely declared this the "Age of Obama." Can you imagine a right-leaning journalist writing a book about the "stunning" McCain campaign and its "bold" path to reform timed for release on Inauguration Day — and then expecting a slot as a moderator for the nation's sole vice presidential debate?

Yeah, I just registered 6.4 on the Snicker Richter Scale, too.

Read the whole thing. Sadly, there is nothing at all remarkable or noteworthy about Ifill's obvious bias, partiality, lack of objectivity, and slanted reporting. Most of the MSM don't even make an effort to conceal it anymore, they're so contemptuous of their political "enemies" and the "bitter clingers" in flyover country. 

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Hanger tariff takes us to the cleaners

Posted by Richard on October 1, 2008

If you've noticed your dry cleaning bills increasing this year, here's one reason: a tariff on Chinese wire clothes hangers has doubled their price, costing dry cleaners $4,000 or more each per year. The reason for the tariff? To protect the sole U.S. hanger manufacturer, M & B Hangers of Alabama.

Mark Perry, citing a report by economist Frank Stephenson in The Freeman, illustrated the absolute stupidity of this "job protection" tariff: 

Further, Stephenson cites this analysis that divides the total cost of the hanger tariff to U.S. dry cleaners ($4,000 x 30,000 dry cleaners = $120 million year), by the number of potential domestic jobs saved (564 jobs) in the U.S. hanger industry, indicating that each American job saved costs us about $212,765 per year. Since the typical full-time worker in this sector earns about $30,000 per year, it would be cheaper for the U.S. to eliminate the tariff, purchase cheaper hangers from China, let the domestic industry die, and pay each American hanger worker $30,000 per year to retire.

Almost a quarter million dollars a year to save a $30k a year job!

Economic illiteracy, coupled with Pat Buchanan style jingoism, is incredibly costly to our economy. As Perry noted, protectionism typically costs us two jobs for every job saved, and thus punishes American consumers and businesses far more than it "punishes" the foreign country it's aimed at.

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