Proof Positive

No Regrets
On a late fall morning, the president hosted a breakfast for a handful of members of Congress who had lost their seats: Kathy Dahlkemper, from Pennsylvania; John Spratt, the House budget chairman, from South Carolina; Jim Oberstar, the House Transportation Committee chairman, from Minnesota; and Melissa Bean, from Illinois. All were from moderate middle America districts. Over breakfast in the Roosevelt Room, they told Obama that unless he acted quickly, he was going to end up like them in 2012 -- out. 


This group, too, was struck by Obama's lack of regret. "In retrospect, we can look back and say we could have done things differently, but I had a very ambitious agenda," Oberstar recalled Obama saying. "In the end, this is for the greater good of the country." He seemed entirely sure he knew what was best for the country; he seemed to think that he was a better judge than the public. (from "The Obamas" by Jodi Kantor as quoted in the Huffington Post, 1/6/2011)


A Democrat confirms what those on the Right have been saying for years about the mindset of the modern Liberal. 


Encouragement
Congress allowed a grant program important to the solar power industry to expire at the end of the year. The program encourages private investment in solar power, is credited with creating thousands of jobs and should be renewed. (NYT editorial, 1/7/2012)


Only the New York Times could write an editorial advocating more government subsidies for solar power.....and not mention Solyndra.


Noted
RedStateVT has been watching Liberal commentators giggle over the past several days about how "unpresidential" the Republican challengers to Obama look and - by contrast - how very presidential Obama appears. Well we will note first that any politician is going to have an advantage standing at a podium with the presidential seal or stepping off of Air Force One.  Second, there is nothing particularly presidential about the primary process itself. It tends to be an extended food fight. Obama certainly did not stand out for his gravitas while slugging it out with Hillary Clinton.


Pressured
The left’s centuries-old mission is to increase social harmony by decreasing antagonisms arising from disparities of wealth — to decrease inequality by increasing government’s redistributive activities. Such government constantly expands under the unending, indeed intensifying, pressures to correct what it disapproves of — the distribution of wealth produced by consensual market activities. But as government presumes to dictate the correct distribution of social rewards, the maelstrom of contemporary politics demonstrates that social strife, not solidarity, is generated by government transfer payments to preferred groups. (George Will, Washington Post, 1/6/2012)


New year, same old brilliance from George Will.