SO LONG, DETROIT

1 - Daniel Greenfield:  “So Long Detroit”:

The crisis of the city is that it has become a welfare state, not just in fact, but in orientation. The city exists to take care of people who won’t take care of themselves. That makes it something between a homeless shelter and a state institution. And to rephrase Groucho Marx, the city may be a wonderful institution, but who wants to live in an institution? Especially one whose chief appeal is to the people dragging it down, not those lifting it up?

The city’s troubles are America’s troubles. A thriving economy can support a welfare state, but a welfare state cannot be an economy. A country or a city needs a purpose that goes beyond providing services for populations that are incapable of doing the least smallest thing for themselves. Without that purpose, it is already a failed state.

Detroit exists to provide welfare for much of its population and to provide government jobs for the people taking care of them. And like those populations where generations collect welfare checks, shop with food stamps and aspire to no future other than the perpetuation of this way of life, the city that they live in has no future.

2 - Heather Wilhelm of Real Clear Politics:

"....somebody like Weiner, craving constant adulation, could never accept being a nobody. Neither could his wife, Huma Abedin, who reportedly pushed for him to run for mayor after his embarrassing congressional resignation......"

 "This is, quite simply, a power-hungry couple working together to claw their way up the political ladder, with a large splash of fame-crazed Internet dystopia served up on the side."