Clipping blog

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Clearing the Browser Tabs – Long Form Monday Edition Posted: 07 Mar 2011 03:10 AM PST As you may have noticed, there wasn’t a lot of activity at The Shack this weekend. I decided to take a day or so off to work on a couple projects on which I’ve wanted to devote some time. If things go well, I’ll be able to tell you more about them soon. If not, well, it was good to work on tasks that aren’t related to the blog or the podcast. Todays links are all long-form blog posts by very good writers. I know that it’s not de rigueur to write a post more than 500 words long or so (apparently, you’re all a bunch of ADHD-addled lab mice on uppers), but I like reading longer pieces on the web. I’ve collected a few gems, some from more famous columnists whose names you may know and some from skilled and clever writers whose names you should know. So enjoy! And now, links! Ace on how the Republican leadership’s timidity on budget cuts let the big-spenders off the ropes and gave them a potent weapon. Ann Coulter on why public sector unions work against you, assuming that you’re not a Democratic politician or a public sector union leader. Mark Steyn on the vastly under-reported story of two American soldiers gunned down by a Muslim in Germany and the demographics that will make such murders far more frequent. Mark Hemingway, at his new digs at The Weekly Standard, on how the Tea Party was right on the home mortgage bailout and the haughty Beltway pundits were dead wrong. Ladd Ehlinger on Serenity and freedom. Avik Roy on why it’s better to have no insurance at all than rely on Medicaid. An interesting and wide-ranging interview with my favorite contemporary historian Paul Johnson.

Watch That Tricky Par 4, Mr President…And the Economy Too, If You Can Spare the Time Posted: 06 Mar 2011 07:31 PM PST Maybe this seems like nitpicking, but isn’t 60 golf trips in 26 months just a tad bit excessive for a chief executive who is on-call all day, every day? I’m reasonably sure that the CEO of, say, IBM doesn’t go on golf trips more than twice a month. I’m darned sure that said CEO wouldn’t head to the links that often if his company was in such serious financial trouble that default was right around the corner and most of his shareholders were so disgusted by his decisions that they occasionally marched in the streets against him by the hundreds of thousands. Of course, IBM is in the private sector and, like Ray Stantz famously intoned in Ghostbusters, the private sector demands results. In the public sector, it seems to be perfectly fine for the President to head to the links every other weekend while the economy is still wheezing under his onerous rule, major portions of the world are in open revolt, tyrants are flexing their muscles left and right, and gasoline prices are headed toward $5 a gallon. Playing a regular round of golf is par for the course for American presidents, and Barack Obama is certainly no different. The President – who admits to more than a passing fondness for the game – has managed to rack up 60 games since he was elected president in 2008. With spring in the air he was spotted back on the course this weekend, at the same time it was revealed he has become the first president to produce White House beer. I’ll add here that the average looks a lot worse if you consider that we have to toss out 9 months of those 26 because of winter. So we’re really talking about 60 golf outings in 17 months, or 3 1/2 outings a month. If we assume the occasional bad weather weekend, it isn’t unrealistic to say that the President went golfing every possible weekend he could since he took office. As the article says, it’s not that big a deal for a President to get in a round here or there, President Obama’s overindulgence notwithstanding. It is, however, curious that the MSM hasn’t banged away at him the way they banged away at his predecessor. The article hits that point, too, more or less. George Bush was widely criticised for playing golf during his term of office, and he became the subject of ridicule when during one media interview on the golf course he signed off by saying, ‘I call upon all nations to to everything they can to stop these terrorist killings. Thank you. Now watch this drive.’ Mr Bush announced he was giving up golf in 2003 because of the war in Iraq, explaining, ‘I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.’ There are those who believe Mr Obama should follow Bush's example, but the President’s love of the game has been supported by White House staff who say he needs ‘downtime’ to deal with the stresses of ruling the U.S. A picture is worth a thousand words, it is said, and the picture of President Obama hitting the links while Muammar Gaddafi butchers his people and Americans line up to pay for gas that should in no sane world cost as much as it does would be in our faces in every news broadcast and the front page of every major newspaper tomorrow morning if another man was President. But that was then and Barack Obama isn’t George Bush. Which explains why, when duty calls, our President answers “Fore!” and the MSM pretends it didn’t hear a thing.

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