The Hollywood Liberal

Power Shifts Push Mideast Closer to War
Peter Goodspeed, National Post
As Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad clings to power with the quiet backing of regional powers Iran and Russia, the Middle East may be sliding slowly into war.Squeezed between the rebellions of a bloody Arab Spring and growing fears of a possible military response to Iran’s growing nuclear threat, the region is becoming increasingly unstable.“I would be very surprised if it turned into a Russian-American war, but this could be a Mid-East war: Hezbollah, Hamas, Iran, Syria, Israel all having at each other,” said Jack Granatstein, military historian and senior…

Obama’s Creepy Campaign Emails
James Taranto, Wall Street Journal
Somewhere along the line, somebody signed us up for the Barack Obama campaign emails. Normally we don't care for spam, political or otherwise, but these are so odd that we've kept them coming out of curiosity. Some of them have a stalker-like quality, plaintive yet vaguely menacing in their persistence, such as the one we noted in September titled “James, can we meet for dinner?”If you don't like it, you can always unsubscribe. But now the campaign is turning the creepiness up a notch. The Obama re-election effort has “asked supporters to make a campaign donation…

A Weak President: From Obama to Romney

Europe in Purgatory
Robert Samuelson, Washington Post
WASHINGTON — By now, it's obvious that adopting the euro was a colossal blunder. It may rank as Europe's worst policy mistake since World War II. The virtues of the common currency — it reduced transaction costs and the uncertainty of fluctuating exchange rates among national monies — were temporary. Its vices seem permanent or, at least, semi-permanent: the mounting economic costs of saving the euro; the growing nationalism from arguing over who's to blame.Do not expect some magical “solution.” Europe has entered an economic and political purgatory from which…

Keystone Blue-Collar Blues
Larry Kudlow, National Review
The payroll-tax-cut debate is not really about the payroll tax, which is a very weak-kneed economic stimulant and a lackluster job creator because of its temporary nature. Without permanent incentives at lower tax rates, these rebates don't do anything for growth and jobs.Instead, the key to understanding the payroll-tax debate is to grasp President Barack Obama's leftist vision of taxing successful earners (the millionaire surtax) and his obsession with clean energy at the expense of fossil fuels. These are ideological positions. They support the Obama vision of class warfare and…