Here on Manly’s Firing Line your humble and patriotic scrivener - a retired Continental Army Colonel (1st New Jersey Regiment) - offers up his brief but incisive opinions on various items in the news today.

Obama: Let’s increase credit by destroying creditors!

Makes sense, right? Of course it doesn’t - but then nothing in this administration’s economic agenda makes any sense whatsoever unless viewed through a socialist prism, sort like that hokey sci-fi flick from the late 80s with Rowdy Roddy Piper where the evil aliens masquerading as humans can be seen for what they really are by viewing them through special sunglasses. Or something.

The money quote comes from Robert Gibbs, natch. When the Obama administration draws to a belated close in 2012 this retard has a whole second career ahead of him in stand up comedy.

“For many people credit cards provide an opportunity to finance purchases,” Gibbs said. “But we think there’s a more equitable way to do that and I think that those reforms are on their way through Congress.”

A more equitable way to do what? Finance purchases? Creditors are lenders and, as such, set the terms of the loan. The consumer can take it or leave it. If he takes it, he’s bound by the credit agreement - sort of like the way homeowners are bound by a mortgage. Um….nevermind.

A clown is welcomed in any circus

It’s one of the intentionally funny storries that leaves you unintentionally creeped out.  I’m not really amazed that a British comedian slipped through security at the State Department. After all, it IS Foggy Bottom and these morons are living proof the government is an equal opportunity employer for the mentally handicapped. What amazes me is that I still get carded at the local liquor store (which has a zero tolerance policy regarding alcohol and minors and therefore cards EVERYONE) and the lady who owns the place scrutinizes every driver license like she’s a TSA nazi at Newark International Airport. Perhaps we should put the liquor store lady in charge of security at the State Department. On second thought, maybe not. Just our luck she would demand to see the President’s birth certificate.

Actually, Alan, some liberal Jews have  a Catholic Church problem

In his JerusalemPost.com blog, liberal legal scholar Alan Dershowitz laments the three or four examples of rank anti-Semitism that have surfaced lately among clerics and prelates of the largest church in Christendom. Seeing as how these misguided individuals represent the extreme exception in a denomination of over 1 billion people that has for its founder and ultimate moral guide a Jewish carpenter who commanded his followers to love one another, I think Mr. Dershowitz is making a mountain out of a molehill.

Anti-Semitism is as much a product of culture and ethnocentrism (Russians, Poles and many Slavic groups have a history of Jew hatred) as it is of theology (the Quran expressly teaches Muslims to hate Jews).

Indeed, if Mr. Dershowitz is really in search of anti-Semitism he need look no farther than his own Democrat Party.

The only Star Trek reviewer who I could trust pretty much confirms what I suspected

Jonah Goldberg is not only a brilliant and incisive political analyst whose terse yet breezy style of writing leaves me chartreuse with envy, but he’s also an excellent critic of pop culture - especially the stuff I happen to like. Naturally, in the decade or more that I’ve been reading him I’ve learned to trust his instincts and judgments as strongly as I trust my own.

When I saw the final trailers for the much ballyhooed Star Trek motion picture an ugly feeling in the pit of my gut told me it was going to be more of the standard Hollywood formula and less of the magic that made the original TV series iconic.

Turns out I was right and Goldberg sums it up succinctly: “J. J. Abrams has reimagined (“rebooted” is the popular term) the Star Trek franchise by starting over with a whole new cast playing James T. Kirk, Dr. McCoy, Spock, and Sulu — now with twice the macho gayness.”

Hence my own bumper sticker: Know Bill Shatner, Know Star Trek. No Bill Shatner? No Star Trek.

Ha! VDH echoed what Manly has been saying all along

I wish. Actually, Victor Davis Hanson - one of the most awesomely brilliant historians of our time - said with far greater eloquence and erudition what I have been struggling to say for months. There are times when I hate this man because he makes it look so easy.

In this instance, Dr. Hanson makes the case for reigniting the conservative flame in the Republican Party while observing the mildew of RINO “centrism” is in dire need of political Clorox. This is a must-read article for any conservative Republican.