American Thinker Blog: Feds issue guidelines to stay away from Vegas and Orlando for meetings

Following the embarrassment of video-taped scenes of federal bureaucrats boogying at the ultra-luxurious Arizona Biltmore Hotel to ‘relieve stress", it is understandable that agencies want to avoid the "appearance" of doing what they are doing: wasting taxpayer money on useless junkets.

We don't know when this guidance was supplied to federal agencies, but a sneaking suspicion is that it was after the Arizona Biltmore tape aired, and some genius in the White House reacted, not realizing that Harry Reid is up for re-election next year. Amateur hour stuff, it seems to me.

At some point the major media will take the trouble to report that before winning his party's nomination Obama hadn't won a major election outright. In previous contests his opponents had been forced to drop out for one reason or another. Hillary (and I'm no fan of hers either) had 15 years (count'em) of anti-Hillary material built up against her by both conservatives and liberals of one kind or another. McCain is considered a lefty among Republicans. "Acceptable" but nothing more. Meanwhile, Democrats who said things like "McCain is one Republican I could see voting for", voted for Obama anyway.

While Obama's term in office will most certainly hurt people who voted for him more than it hurts people who didn't, it will hurt all Americans in ways that will take a generation to recover from.

The empty suit in the White House isn't really all that hard to explain. It will be hard to forget.

Featured Article - WSJ.com

GDANSK, Poland--When talking about Ronald Reagan, I have to be personal. We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can't be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.

Poles fought for their freedom for so many years that they hold in special esteem those who backed them in their struggle. Support was the test of friendship. President Reagan was such a friend. His policy of aiding democratic movements in Central and Eastern Europe in the dark days of the Cold War meant a lot to us. We knew he believed in a few simple principles such as human rights, democracy and civil society. He was someone who was convinced that the citizen is not for the state, but vice-versa, and that freedom is an innate right.

Bezos: We've got issues with Google Book Search | The Social - CNET News

"We have strong opinions about that issue which I'm not going to share," Bezos said to interviewer Steven Levy at the Wired Business Conference. "But, clearly, that settlement in our opinion needs to be revisited and it is being revisited."

What? You have a copyright on your opinions too?

My problem with Amazon is that after they came out with the Kindle they acquired Mobipocket and on the homepage of that site are listed the "100 last arrivals", which it seems came to an abrupt halt on 2006-03-19. Fortunately there are alternate (and better) sources of public domain books in Kindle compatible format, but no thanks to Amazon, who would much rather direct you to moth-eaten hardcopies at their partner sites (used bookstores who pay Amazon for the privilege of selling through them).

I like the Kindle, but I don't like some of the self serving attitude that goes with it. Amazon can keep their strong opinions to themselves.

Freedom in the 50 States

"We find that the freest states in the country are New Hampshire, Colorado, and South Dakota, which together achieve a virtual tie for first place. All three states feature low taxes and government spending and middling levels of regulation and paternalism. New York is the least free by a considerable margin, followed by New Jersey, Rhode Island, California and Maryland. On personal freedom alone, Alaska is the clear winner, while Maryland brings up the rear. As for freedom in the different regions of the country, the Mountain and West North Central regions are the freest overall while the Middle Atlantic lags far behind on both economic and personal freedom. Regression analysis demonstrates that states enjoying more economic and personal freedom tend to attract substantially higher rates of internal net migration."

New York News - David Mamet: Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal' -

"I'd observed that lust, greed, envy, sloth, and their pals are giving the world a good run for its money, but that nonetheless, people in general seem to get from day to day; and that we in the United States get from day to day under rather wonderful and privileged circumstances—that we are not and never have been the villains that some of the world and some of our citizens make us out to be, but that we are a confection of normal (greedy, lustful, duplicitous, corrupt, inspired—in short, human) individuals living under a spectacularly effective compact called the Constitution, and lucky to get it."