From Taki

• You’ve got to give Bill Kristol some credit for being honest about dropping the pretence of conservatism or classical liberalism.
• Paul Gottfried likes the Constitution Party (more). I don’t as I don’t think it’s a good idea for Protestantism to be the law of the land, and that doesn’t make me a creepy selfish Ayn Randian with authority issues either.
• Wait a second — might the terrorists in Mumbai have had actual political objectives? Are you suggesting that they don’t just hate freedom and wealth? Who has ever heard of such a thing? Obviously not the Protestant-right bloggers.
• The financial nightmare before Christmas.
• The Fed, whose easy money policy created the housing bubble that has exploded in our faces, is back printing money and shoveling cash into the banks.
• The wars on common sense.
• Tough times bring out the best in us, as people like to say. People say a lot of things. John Zmirak explains.
  

  The “financial services” we performed boiled down, in the end, to carting money from China, skimming several billion off the top to pay for Vassar tuition and sex-change procedures, then returning it to China in the form of IOUs. Somehow, this industry turned out not to be sustainable.
  
  “Trust me.” If someone feels the need to actually say this to you, it’s time to grab your pockets, close your knees, and tighten your buttocks. Once the person’s out of sight, interview all your prepubescent children and check the fillings in your teeth.
  
  “I’ll pray for you.” This is Christian-ese for “Go BLEEP yourself.”
  
  “The check is in the mail.” Yeah, but they used Confederate stamps.
  
  “We in management regret these layoffs and cutbacks, and are tightening our own belts and sharing in the sacrifice.” Translation: We’re finally getting rid of all the deadwood down on the shop-floor, and replacing them with robots made by Christian slaves in China.
  
  “Think globally, act locally.” If you see this on a new neighbor’s Prius, what it really means is: “My very presence here will raise your rent/property taxes.”