Not surprisingly, November was a bad month all around for car manufacturers:
DETROIT — Despite unprecedented discounts on many models, November was the worst month yet in a horrible year for vehicle sales in the United States.
Sales fell 41 percent at General Motors, which began its year-end clearance sale several weeks early and 33.9 percent at [...]

Continue reading " Another Bad Month For Car Sales "

In a column meant to rebut the assertions of Kathleen Parker, Jeffrey Hart, and others who have said in the weeks since Election Day that the Republican Party needed to distance itself from the Religious Right to survive, Rod Dreher ends up making Parker’s and Hart’s point for them:
Today, the greatest threats to conservative interests [...]

Continue reading " The Problem With Social Conservatives "

Not surprisingly, the earlier reports of a Clinton succeeding Clinton in the Senate have been shot down:
WASHINGTON (CNN — Former President Bill Clinton has no interest in replacing his wife in the U.S. Senate, his spokesman said, adding any speculation that he would be interested is “completely false.”
(…)ome were suggesting that the former president replace [...]

Continue reading " Bill Clinton Says No To The Senate "

Robert Higgs takes a look at the hysteria that seems to be building in the popular media over the risk that we’re entering a deflationary recession:
We are now hearing ominous warnings about imminent deflation. Checking the welcome page at AOL this morning, I see that the lead item in the financial news section heralds “The [...]

Continue reading " Is There Really A Risk Of Deflation ? "

Today’s the day that the homework is due.
First out of the gate, Ford says it needs $ 9 billion and says that it needs both it’s rivals to survive:
DETROIT — The Ford Motor Company told Congress on Tuesday that it wanted access to $9 billion in loans but that it could survive and become profitable [...]

Continue reading " Ford Makes It’s Case For A $ 9 Billion Bailout "

Apparently, some billboards paid for by a Colorado atheist are causing a controversy:
The message is but eight words divided into two short sentences set against puffy white clouds on a blue and black background.
One of the men behind the billboard message says his life has been threatened because of it, which seems an odd thing [...]

Continue reading " So Much For Religious Freedom "

Sarah Palin became Governor of Alaska due in part to the fact that she challenged and defeated the incumbent Republican Governor, Frank Murkowski, who just happened to be the most powerful politician in the state.
Now, Murkowski’s daughter seems concerned that Palin may be poised to go after her in 2010:
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski has some [...]

Continue reading " Will Sarah Palin Take On Another Murkowski ? "

Battlestar Galactica may be leaving the air in March, but it’s story will continue:
Sci Fi Channel has greenlit “Caprica,” the much-anticipated prequel to hit series “Battlestar Galactica.”
“Caprica” will star Eric Stoltz, Esai Morales, Paula Malcomson and Polly Walker, and will be set 50 years prior to “Galactica’s” seminal attack on human civilization by those dreaded [...]

Continue reading " SciFi Channel Gives Caprica The Go-Ahead "

I’m thinking that this is going to become a regular feature here between now and January 20th.
Today, we learn that hotel owners in the D.C. area are trying to get every last dollar they can:
Deirdre Flanagan, a lifelong Democrat, wanted to splurge on the presidential inauguration.
Although she lives in Annapolis, Flanagan decided to book a [...]

Continue reading " Inauguration Madness Update "

Mike Taibbi surveys the damage resulting from what may have been one of the worst-run Presidential campaigns in modern history:
[T]his election season may have done to the word “Republican” what 1972 did for the word “liberal”: turned it into a poisonous sobriquet that no politician with bipartisan aspirations will ever again welcome. The Republicans didn’t [...]

Continue reading " A McCain/Palin Requiem "

Not surprisingly, it’s fairly clear that nobody in Washington seems to know what they’re doing to the economy:
The head of a new Congressional panel set up to monitor the gigantic federal bailout says the government still does not seem to have a coherent strategy for easing the financial crisis, despite the billions it has already [...]

Continue reading " The Plan Is There Is No Plan "

Or, at the very least, surprised that Obama picked Hillary and that she said yes:
Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh says he’s “stunned” that Hillary Clinton accepted the job as President-elect Obama’s secretary of state.
In an interview with Barbara Walters to air on “The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2008,” Limbaugh called the choice of Clinton [...]

Continue reading " Rush Limbaugh Is Speechless "

And this time, I doubt that anyone will even notice:
The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.
The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security [...]

Continue reading " Another Whimper In The Continuing Death Of Liberty "

The latest rumor about who will take over as moderator of Meet The Press:
David Gregory will take the reins as moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Huffington Post has learned. Gregory has been a leading contender for the permanent spot since Tom Brokaw stepped in as interim moderator following Tim Russert’s death in June.
In [...]

Continue reading " David Gregory To Replace Tim Russert ? "

Brad at The Crossed Pond ponders a Bush Administration without 9/11:
I can’t help but think that in some alternate universe where 911 didn’t happen, Bush didn’t carry so much psychological baggage, and didn’t prove so malleable when pushed towards corportaism, police statism, and neoconservatism, he might have been a passable president (probably at best). [...]

Continue reading " Pondering What Might Have Been "

It’s becoming apparent that Al Franken isn’t going to pull ahead of Norm Coleman in the still-ongoing Minnesota Senate race:
While a tiny margin separates the candidates in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race, it is wide enough that Democrat Al Franken faces a daunting task in challenging votes to erase Sen. Norm Coleman’s lead.
The two sides [...]

Continue reading " Will Al Franken Be A Sore Loser ? "

With Hillary Clinton headed to Foggy Bottom in January, speculation about her successor is heating up:
The task of choosing a successor falls to David Paterson, New York’s Democratic governor. Whomever he picks would serve for two years, before a special election in November 2010 to decide who fills the last two years of Clinton’s term.
Paterson [...]

Continue reading " Bill Clinton For Senate ? "

George W. Bush on the greatest regret of his Presidency:
Looking back on his eight years in the White House, President George W. Bush pinpointed incorrect intelligence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction as “biggest regret of all the presidency.”
“I think I was unprepared for war,” Bush told ABC News’ Charlie Gibson [...]

Continue reading " Now He Tells Us "

Earlier this year, John McCain and Hillary Clinton tried to put some life into their respective campaigns by endorsing a gas tax holiday that would have lasted for the entire summer. As I noted back then, the proposal made almost no economic sense and would have likely resulted in no real savings for the public.
Now, [...]

Continue reading " Another Tax Holiday Gimmick "

Wall Street greeted the new month by falling like a rock yet again:
The evidence of a recession has been widespread for months: slower production, stagnant wages and hundreds of thousands of lost jobs.
But the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research, charged with making the call for the history books, waited until now to make it [...]

Continue reading " What A Way To Start December "