Feb
10
2006

URLs du Jour

2006-02-10

  • Constrained Katie has a roundup of skeptical reaction to Dubya's American Competitiveness Initiative. It's the same old social-engineering "investment" crapola, where megabucks targeted by wise and benevolent bureaucrats will pay off handsomely down the road. Sure.

  • Remember "Rock the Vote"? It seems headed for an overdue and unlamented death, according to a recent LA Times article. Quoted is chairman of the board Fred Goldring, who speculates:
    "We're like the popular kid who never gets asked out because everyone thinks he already has a date."

    If only Fred had been around when I was a kid! It would have been nice to have a buddy tell me the reason I was home on Saturday night was that I was too popular!

    Here is the Rock the Vote website. And they have a blog! And, in second place on their "Current Issue Links" blogroll: the AARP! I'm obviously non-young, and spectacularly unhip, but even I rolled my eyes at this.

    But hipness aside: for a group concerned with "political power for young people", a quick glance around the website shows that RtV is spectacularly uninterested in thinking critically about Social Security. Given well-known demographic and fiscal trends, it's tempting to speculate on exactly how devoted RtV is to the political interests of the young.

    All this spurred by a funny short article at the American Spectator by Doug Powers, which riffs on the problems of RtV specifically and tedious left-wing pop-culture icons generally. Memorable paragraph:

    Celebrities can really get full of themselves. Years ago, my wife and I saw Don Henley in concert. Some great music, but in order to hear it, those in attendance were forced to put up with a sanctimonious monologue about saving Walden Woods that would have made Thoreau himself take his own life. We came to hear "Boys of Summer" and "Hotel California," and ended up nearly violating federal law by wringing the neck of an Eagle.

  • If you're looking for a good reason to throw fundraising appeals from the Republican National Committee in the trash unopened, Jay Tea at WizBang has one. (Or, alternately, you could use the RNC's postage-paid envelope to send Jay Tea's article to them instead of a check.)

  • But our own Senator Sununu continues to impress me, and (frankly) it's not easy for a politician to do that consistently. Latest news is that he's successfully encouraged the Administration to drop a couple of the worst parts of the Patriot Act extension. Power Line has more, and they speculate in addition that it (once again) puts Democrats in between a rock (of appearing soft on terrorism) and a hard place (of disappointing their moonbat base). Gee, that's too bad.


Last Modified 2006-02-10 7:07 PM EDT