Behind Blue Lines

Strator: Rumors of the Chinese Central Bank Chief’s Defection

Crocker — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:37:24 +0000

Stratfor is reporting a rumor that the head of China’s Central Bank has left the country, apparently one step ahead of the sheriff. Rumors have circulated in China that People’s Bank of China (PBC) Gov. Zhou Xiaochuan may have left the country. The rumors appear to have started following reports on Aug. 28 which cited [...]

Reflections on Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” Rally

Crocker — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:15:38 +0000

I attended the Glenn Beck rally on August 28th with about 300,000 of my closest friends. I went more or less as an observer – I am not a hard-core Beck devotee, although I often watch his Fox News program when the 5-6 pm hour is free. While I think there is a good deal [...]

Texas to EPA: Shove It

Crocker — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:29:43 +0000

Pat Caddell recently opined that the American peoples’ mood – after being repeatedly shoved by the radical left – is ‘pre-revolutionary’. Ordinarily, I’d be inclined to dismiss Pat’s comment as hyperbolic but these are certainly not ordinary times. If you doubt me, simply consider Texas and the EPA. As we know by now, the EPA [...]

Milovan Djilas and the Ruling Class

Crocker — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:09:48 +0000

The chief visible product of leftism is a feigned egalitarianism. While Marx and his disciples claimed to create a classless society, the reality was of course quite different. There are always the insiders, the ones who scheme and maneuver, who look out for themselves and their friends. While this behavior is part of a universal [...]

Quantitative Easing 2: The Federal Reserve Doubles Down

Crocker — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 13:04:14 +0000

As reported in the UK Telegraph yesterday, it appears that the Fed is considering opening the money supply spigot once again with a gargantuan round of quantitative easing, which is the fancy term for printing money. The reason? The economy is not “rebounding” as Tim Geithner told us last week in the New York Times; [...]

Newt Gingrich: Hot and Cold

Crocker — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:30:23 +0000

For the last twenty years I’ve blown hot and cold on Newt Gingrich. I’ve admired his fertile mind and his ability to articulate great conservative principles. He’s a natural teacher and it shows. I’ve also admired him for the ‘Contract with America’ – the successful strategy to nationalize local congressional races that resulted in the [...]

Attending RightOnline

Crocker — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 21:51:53 +0000

I had the privilege of attending Americans for Prosperity’s “RightOnline” event in Las Vegas last weekend. I flew in on Thursday the 22nd and met up with mates from Maine at the Venetian Hotel, the conference location. The conference began on Friday morning and concluded late Saturday afternoon with a “practicum” – working a phone [...]

Our Future Under ObamaCare – The Bureaucratic Behemoth

Crocker — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:01:45 +0000

It’s curious, is is not, that while Britain’s National Health Service is decentralizing itself and eliminating much of its bureaucracy, we’re going in exactly the opposite direction? In fact, we’re creating a jumble of new agencies whose function, size and complexity beggar the imagination. Courtesy of Coordination Problem, here’s a flow chart illustrating our bureaucratic [...]

Eric Holder and His Friend Malik Shabazz

Crocker — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:49:15 +0000

By most accounts, Eric Holder’s Department of Justice is the most politicized department in the last hundred years. There is little in Holder or his conduct to inspire much confidence and his unwillingness to enforce the Voting Rights Act in a racially neutral way merely adds luster to his reputation. The current scandal involving the [...]

A Churchill Moment: Is There Something Gaining on Us?

Crocker — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 23:48:24 +0000

Given the highly uncertain state of the world, I’ve been re-reading Churchill’s multi-volume Second World War memoir. I’ve just finished The Gathering Storm (covering the run up to war) and Their Finest Hour (covering the Battles of France and Britain in 1940). To understand the background involved, note that Churchill was out of power for [...]

A Tax Lesson on S-Corps

Moody — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 16:48:14 +0000

A recent Forbes blog post got me thinking more about this little-noticed provision in the so-called “jobs bill” that was recently defeated in the Senate. The provision would have extended the FICA tax to S-corp dividends. Let’s delve a little deeper into the history of the S-corp to better understand why this is a horrible, [...]

James Madison on the Framers

Crocker — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:56:31 +0000

Our principal source for the inner workings of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 is James Madison’s Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787. The Debates are the actual minutes of the convention. After leaving the presidency in 1817, Madison revised and annotated his papers, including the Debates. In the Introduction to the Debates, Madison gave [...]

U.S. Unemployment 2007-2010 – The Geography of a Recession

Crocker — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 16:16:24 +0000

Compliments of the The American Observer (the magazine of the American University J-School), here’s a rather effective flash presentation showing the spread of the current recession. With Hope ‘n Change and the current Congress in charge, I don’t see this turning around anytime soon.

Rick Santelli: Stop Spending, Stop Spending, STOP SPENDING

Crocker — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 13:51:28 +0000

This is the same guy who arguably launched the tea party movement with his rant last year from the floor of the Chicago Exchange. Now he’s done it again in another brilliant improvisation, spewing on Steve Liesman, CNBC’s financial correspondence who was reporting from the White House lawn. Liesman is known for his book, The [...]

Eric Holder, DOJ and the New Black Panther Case

Crocker — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 11:16:54 +0000

The day after the 2008 election, we noted the New Black Panther video that even then had gone viral – you know, the video that had baton-wielding thugs intimidating voters outside a Philadelphia polling place. We noted that the ‘mainstream’ press seemed uninterested. And they were. And over the last two years the media’s disinterest [...]

Coburn v. Kagan: Can the Federal Government Tell Us What to Eat?

Crocker — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 14:12:29 +0000

While I agree with many commentators that the Elena Kagan hearings have begun to resemble a rather bad Gilbert & Sullivan production, there was one very revealing moment during yesterday’s hearing. It came when Tom Coburn explored with Kagan the reach of the Commerce Clause, the vehicle for so much Congressional mischief over the past [...]

Capping the Private Sector

Moody — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 12:48:30 +0000

While the Obama Administration struggles to contain the Gulf oil spill, the Administration has succeeded in capping the private sector. Today the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis released new personal income data for the first quarter of 2010. Unfortunately, this brings more bad news for Americans. As shown in Chart 1, America’s [...]

Memorial Day 2010

Crocker — Mon, 31 May 2010 12:29:49 +0000

My family is filled with men who wore the uniform. These include my father, father-in-law, uncles, cousins, grandfathers, great-great grandfather and others. By way of a Memorial Day remembrance, however, this post is a specific tribute to my uncle, First Lt. Alfred C. Chamberlain, who died on March 13, 1944, near the hamlet of Wrentham [...]

Military Monday: Early Jet Carrier Ops

Crocker — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:24:58 +0000

At the end of World War II, the US Navy possessed the largest fleet in the world, but one that was mass-produced to fight the current war. All the services faced massive demobilization at war’s end but the cuts hit hardest at the Army and Navy. The new Air Force was the darling of defense [...]

The Genocidal Impulse is Alive and Well – and Living at UC San Diego

Crocker — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:14:58 +0000

David Horowitz spoke at UC San Diego on May 10th about Israel, Islamic terrorism and freedom in education. In the question and answer, Horowitz was confronted by a young member of the local Muslim Student Association. If any of us had any doubts about the genocidal impulse in radical Islam, wonder no more. Here it [...]