Uh oh… they let her talk.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Open thread here.  But I thought I should post in case Dan is unable to.  Hopefully all of our West Coast readers are doing fine.  I haven’t heard of any injuries in California.

More to follow, I’m sure….

In their remarkable spirit of tolerance, the folks at the taxpayer-funded National Public Radio (NPR)

. . . has asked Fox News not to identify its news analyst, Juan Williams, with NPR branding when he appears on Fox News because of outrage among its largely liberal listener-base.

That was just too rich.  A radio network which leans left on the taxpayer dime upset that one of its commentators appears on a private TV network that supposedly leans right.

And Williams is himself no conservative.  But, before these lefties begin their belly-aching, they should actually watch their NPR colleague on FoxNews.  Personally, I find his presence there one of the best things about the network.  Simply put, he’s a very smart liberal who engages his conservative counterparts.

Not just that, while he wants Obama to succeed, he’s honest about the president’s missteps and failings.  He is, in short, a liberal with integrity.  I like to listen to Williams because he offers the liberal point of view without bile.  He doesn’t bash conservatives; he counters their arguments.

He makes a better cause for liberalism than do those who routinely attack FoxNews and does so on FoxNews.  How many other liberals get the chance to make their case in a supposedly conservative forum and do so in a manner which doesn’t antagonize their ideological adversaries?

Well, yesterday, this good man showed that he respects political movements at odds with his own ideas–and the president he supports — when he warned Democrats that there is a danger in their attempts

. . . to dismiss the tea party movement as violent racists deserving of contempt. Demonizing these folks may energize the Democrats’ left-wing base. But it is a big turnoff to voters who have problems with the Democratic agenda that have nothing to do with racism. . . .

But Democrats cannot win elections without capturing the votes of independent-minded swing voters. And that is where writing off the tea party as a bunch of racist kooks becomes self-destructive. The tea party outrage over health-care reform, deficit spending and entitlements run amok is no fringe concern. And it is insulting to all voters to suggest that criticism of President Obama, even by people who want to throw him out of office, is motivated by racism.

Like Patrik Jonsson at the Christian Science Monitor, Williams understands that Tea Party protesters (more…)

Just chanced upon this post, The Coming Conservative Renaissance, while linking another.  I had penned it in October 2008.

In today’s Washington Examiner, Mark Tapscott writes:

The reality is that Bush was anything but a conservative, judged by the major decisions of his presidency, according to two stalwarts of the conservative movement establishment. That’s the argument made by Craig Shirley, author of two of the best books on Ronald Reagan’s rise to the White House, and Donald Devine, one of Reagan’s chief political strategiests during that rise, have a superb oped in today’s edition of The Washington Post.

“But the results speak otherwise. In total, Bush increased federal spending on domestic programs more than any president since Richard Nixon, easily surpassing Bill Clinton, Carter and his own father, so much so that by 2008, America had two big-government parties.

To be sure, W was solid on national security matters and judicial appointments, but on spending he was Obama-lite.  Nearly four years ago, when Bush was still president, I wrote this about him:

On domestic spending, he has rivaled Lyndon Johnson’s profligacy. Not only that. He has failed to follow Ronald Reagan’s legacy of federalism; instead of returning government functions to the states, has nationalized them.

Funny that many Americans rejected the GOP in 2008 because their previous standard bearer had been so bad on spending so they voted for someone who promised a “net spending cut” and to “pay for his new spending plans with even bigger spending cuts.”

Only on spending, Obama makes W seem parsimonious by contrast.