Notes on spinoff pages:
All the material about judicial vacancies, filibusters in the Senate, and lawyers in general, has been moved here.
All the material about The Minimum Wage and Organized Labor Issues now appear on their own pages. (Splitting up these larger pages makes it easier for you to get to the information you want without having to wait for an enormous page to load.)
Also there is a page about the 2004 election, its aftermath, and the lessons to be learned, and (obviously) a newer one about the 2006 election.
There is also a new page about The Great Wall Street Bailout of 2008.
There is a special subsection at the bottom of this page about Caroline Kennedy and her attempt to get a seat in the Senate based entirely on her family's wealth and influence.
There is also a subsection about MADD, which is an organization that apparently spends its time and effort on a lot of issues unrelated to drunk driving.
Note: All the material about domestic spying, normally seen in this spot, has been moved here.
And now there is a new page about Term limits for Congress.
Newt Struck Gold, Promptly Abandoned Mine. America as founded is being ripped out from under us in broad daylight, and this rip-off is being propelled and celebrated by our education, entertainment, and media elites. Far deeper than the "economic versus social" meme debated by shallow and isolated strategists and pundits, something much more foundational is going wrong, and so few are willing to confront this fact.
For Santorum. Rick Santorum opposed TARP. He didn't cave when Chicken Littles in Washington invoked a manufactured crisis in 2008. He didn't follow the pro-bailout GOP crowd — including Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich — and he didn't have to obfuscate or rationalize his position then or now, like Rick Perry and Herman Cain did. He also opposed the auto bailout, Freddie and Fannie bailout, and porkulus bills. Santorum opposed individual health care mandates — clearly and forcefully — as far back as his 1994 U.S. Senate run. He has launched the most cogent, forceful fusillade against both Romney and Gingrich for their muddied, pro-individual health care mandate waters.
Is Rick Santorum the logical conservative alternative? [Scroll down] The candidate actually making the conservative case on the campaign trail is Rick Santorum. Santorum scored points off of Romney in both Florida debates, especially the last one, because Santorum hasn't ever backed an individual mandate as a health-care solution and doesn't have to defend that position. He's never backed TARP, either. That doesn't make Santorum a perfect conservative candidate, but he seems to be the only one who's focusing on the actual conservative agenda.
Sixty-Five to One: It's Not That Complicated. As my friend Jim Galloway notes at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Mitt Romney ran 65 ads for every 1 ad run by or for Newt Gingrich. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were shut out altogether. If you win the air war that significantly, you are going to win the election.
Santorum Can Beat Romney. There's not much that Obama can really use to destroy Santorum. There is plenty to use against Gingrich. There is plenty of room for somebody like Santorum to grow in popularity, because most voters still are getting to know him.
If Bloggers Aren't Journalists, Neither Are Many Members of the MSM. In the past, many famous and well-respected journalists had no formal training but honed their craft on the job, in many cases beginning their careers as copy boys/copy girls. Walter Cronkite, once cited as the most trusted man in America, was a college dropout who had a series of newspaper jobs reporting news and sports. Eric Sevareid, Chet Huntley, and David Brinkley started their careers as broadcast journalists but never had journalism degrees. Dan Rather did receive a degree in journalism, and we can see how well that turned out once he decided to switch to advocacy journalism instead of the traditional who, what, when, where and how protocol of traditional journalism.
Our Elective Despotism. Both the Republican and Democratic establishments are composed of hopelessly corrupt, procrastinating control freaks, who seek fame and fortune through over-spending money they didn't earn and enthusiastically crushing any spontaneous outbreaks of democracy among U.S. citizens, for example, the Tea Party.
1,000 Days Without a Budget: Facts on the Senate's Failure. Tuesday, January 24, will mark the 1,000th day since the U.S. Senate has passed a budget — an egregious dereliction of duty on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's (DÐNV) watch. By enacting continuing resolution upon continuing resolution (short-term measures to keep the government running, spending money at the current rate), the Senate has taken a pass on leading, all to the detriment of the poor and middle class.
The Self-Destruction of the Mainstream Media. For the past forty years the mainstream media has become increasingly liberal and more overt in promoting the policies of the Democratic Party. This evolutionary process reached its zenith in 2008 when the media were instrumental in Barack Obama being elected President. Many journalists dropped any pretense of objectivity and became not only cheerleaders but active de facto members of the campaign. ... Thus they appear willing to sacrifice their own future and standard of living by actively campaigning for Obama's re-election rather than honestly report on the lies and machinations of this regime and their devastating impact on future generations.
Time to Purge the Republican Party. Unlike the Democratic Party, which is largely united around certain key issues — gay marriage, comprehensive sex education, abortion, higher taxes, more spending — the Republican Party is all over the place. The Republican Party includes high-tax deficit hawks, and it includes low-tax supply-siders. It includes high-spending compassionate conservatives, and it includes low-spending small government types. It includes pro-gay marriage libertarians and pro-traditional marriage religious voters. It includes hard-line, anti-immigration believers and open-borders free marketers.
Memo to GOP: Make Obama Pay for Keystone Failure. For all its alleged prowess, the Obama political team makes its share of tin-earned decisions -- whether it's pursuing an unpopular healthcare power grab in the midst of a jobs crisis, throwing lavish parties at inopportune times, or taking legal action to block supermajority-supported immigration and voter ID laws. The Keystone decision might take the tone-deafness cake, however, and the GOP should exploit it to inflict maximum political pain on the White House.
Mark Levin: Egalitarianism creates hell on earth. Besides the ruling elites, egalitarianism has made North Koreans all equally poor. And the case isn't specific to North Korea either. As radio talk show host and author Levin points out in his latest book, Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America, the utopian dream, wherever it is implemented, always leads to misery and widespread destitution.
Mark Levin's 'Ameritopia'. Mark Levin's hard work in researching, organizing and writing his new book, "Ameritopia," will be a blessing for all who read it. Countless books chronicle the forward march of the liberal agenda and attempt to deconstruct the fallacies in modern leftist thinking. Many critique the statist policies the left has imposed on us the past half-century and their disastrous effects on our culture, our economy and our national security. Few modern books, however, direct our attention to first principles, perhaps assuming people implicitly understand the philosophical and ideological underpinnings of conservative thinking, and even fewer truly explore the anatomy of the liberal vision.
Welcome to the Plantation. Much has been written about the Democrat plantation. On this Democrat plantation, it is said that today's American blacks are slaves to the Democratic Party, much as their ancestors were slaves to their antebellum plantation masters. Then, as now, they were given scraps compared to their masters. Then, as now, running away or any disobedience by an individual was severely punished. Conservatives who have any exposure to "conservative" media are quick to point this out. What they fail to realize is that they, too, are on a plantation.
Obama versus U.S. Constitution: Which is Dispensable? Do we now have a self-proclaimed king on our hands? Is the Constitution really necessary anymore? In all of our wisdom, have we now evolved beyond the need of a Constitution? Have we advanced beyond the need of checks and balances that were set in place by our Founding Fathers to curb the egotistical pride of any one man or woman? The answer, respectively, is "maybe", "absolutely", "an indisputable no", and "a resounding thumbs down!"
Why We Need A Constitutional Conservative Candidate. Our debt and spending have reached catastrophic proportions in the context of global financial difficulties and political upheaval. Consequently, by the end of 2012, America will either have taken a decisive step toward socialistic collectivism in the name of "equality" and "social justice," where businesses and owners are punitively taxed to "pay their fair share," or America will take a major step in the direction of returning to our Founders' constitutional government, restoring the rule of law, federalism, free enterprise, and individual initiative and responsibility.
End Romney's Inevitability Myth. All of Romney's money, organization, and five plus years of stumping Iowa could only wring a photo-finish with back-of-the-pack candidate Rick Santorum. It's the Republican establishment that's playing the perceptions game, folks, and they're doing a pretty effective job spinning Romney as a done deal.
If GOP Goes Easy on Obama, It'll Be a Fatal Mistake. In 2008, John McCain refused (and refused to allow his surrogates) to discuss almost anything from Obama's scandal-ridden personal life, from his associations with domestic terrorists to his longtime membership in the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's church. Even mentioning Obama's middle name was off-limits. Meanwhile, the Obama campaign was busy portraying his opponent, John McCain, as too old, hot-tempered and out-of-touch to lead the country.
Foreign Interests Paying Millions to Sabotage Canada's Energy Industry. Leftist environmental groups again carry water for Islamic supremacists, trying to make sure Canada stays dependent on Middle Eastern oil instead of developing its own.
Top 10 Ways Hollywood Can Win Its Audience Back. [#10] The Lousy Theatre Experience: Talkers, cell phones, ticket and concession prices. You've got to fix this. Right now, unless you're the one doing the obnoxious talking, going to the theatre is a stressful and miserable experience. Moreover, you're charging us too much for tickets, and the theatres are absolutely gouging us for food and drink...
So Many Outrages, So Little Time. The Catholic Advocate explains in [a] short online video, and writes in another forum the following: ["]Think about some of the policies that have taken root since Obama entered the White House:
• No longer defending the Defense of Marriage Act;
• Forcing private insurers to provide contraception like the morning after pill to women at no charge;
• Reversing the ban on federal dollars from funding stem cell research;
• Taking away health care providers' rights of conscience.
Other than the controversial spending and tax bills, these policies are the highlights of what the Obama administration has accomplished.["]
America's Greatness Will Defeat Obama. This century will be an American century, much like the last one. Despite what President Obama believes, we are not one nation among many, we are the United States of America, the greatest nation on earth, and the last best hope for humanity. The only thing standing between the United States and continued exceptionalism is the dreary delirium of Barack Obama, whose dismal socialist policies have been a spectacular disaster for the nation.
Throw 'Em All Out... And Good Riddance! Crony capitalism is the most serious current danger to the American community, a threat not simply to government or the economy, but to our very way of life. It is the worst such threat since the trusts and monopolies of the early 20th century, and in much the same way. Cronyism is one of the major forces behind the establishment of the corrupt pseudo-aristocracy that has been taking shape in this country over the past two decades, a synthetic privileged class made up in large part of politicians, hustlers, and hangers-on who have become expert in exploiting the rest of us. The legacy media, for some obscure reason, tends to bury discussions about this group.
Who is 'The Press' in the First Amendment? What does "the press" mean in the First Amendment's guarantee "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of... the press"? The Mainstream Media or collection of reputable Internet, print, TV, and radio journalists, right? Bloggers, too, if you're feeling generous?
Central Control Caused USSR's Collapse — And May Cause Ours. Even today, almost exactly 20 years after it happened, Westerners asked to explain the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union tend to serve up theories that flatter preconceived ideological biases.
Congress plays charades with insider trading. [Scroll down] That's because the STOCK Act is just theater, not good governance. This bill might make Congress look like it got something done, but it won't stop many of the trades Congress has been making. To prevent members of Congress and their staffs from cashing in on their positions while in office, a law needs to require them to report all financial transactions in real time, on the date they are made and prevent them from capitalizing on any nonpublic information they receive from any source gathered in the course of their public service. The proposed STOCK Act has enough loopholes to drive a truck through.
Rats in the Kitchen: A Parable. Once, there was a man who had to deal with rats when he had a major infestation in his home. The rats' normal environment became unable to support them all, and they began coming down from the hills looking for new digs... and decided they liked the man's house. They were perfectly happy to hunker down in the attic, garage and basement with free access to the goodies in the kitchen and pantry. And once they had moved in and saw what rich booty was to be had, they were determined to take over.
Our Marxist Wizard of Oz. Here is what really happened. Those Bush tax cuts quickly ended the 2001 recession, despite the contractionary economic impacts of 9/11, and the economy continued to grow for another 73 months. After the rate cuts were all fully implemented in 2003, the economy created 7.8 million new jobs and the unemployment rate fell from over 6% to 4.4%. Real economic growth over the next 3 years doubled from the average for the prior 3 years, to 3.5%.
What Line Must Newt Gingrich Cross for Conservatives to Disown Him? [Scroll down] Gingrich had teamed up with Al Sharpton on Obama's behalf on an education stint during which Gingrich piled heaps of praise upon Obama for his wonderful stance on education. Who in his right mind would choose Al Sharpton, from the entire country, as the "education professor" who will help reform the broken system? Where was Al when Obama closed the voucher program in D.C. which had helped poor, struggling, mostly minority students get a better education at a cheaper cost? Admittedly, there are some other education professionals such as terrorist Bill Ayers who are equally disqualified. However, that is not reason enough to dismiss Sharpton's acts of terror, which have NYC trembling in their boots from fear.
The USS Karl Marx. The Senate version of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act includes an amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, Missouri Republican, to "require a report on the policies and practices ... for naming the vessels of the Navy." ... The catalyst for the amendment was the announcement last spring that the newest supply ship in the Navy's inventory would be named after labor leader Cesar Chavez. This radical served briefly in the Navy after World War II but did not accomplish anything noteworthy while in uniform. His claim to fame was solely from organizing migrant laborers and agitating for the rights of illegal immigrants.
How the Left is Sucking the Life out of the Private Economy. The current financial debacle in Europe and the near-bankrupt status of the United Sates have been brought about by an obsessive loyalty to statist doctrine and an inability to admit failure — traits common to the left on both sides of the Atlantic. The current dilemma is the end-product of decades of uncontrolled spending and economic policies promoted not to benefit the people in the long term, but to maintain the power base of the dominant governing class. The path to insolvency taken by the countries of Europe and the United States has been on a parallel track.
Mitt Romney: Tom Dewey All Over Again. By their fruits, you shall know them. Our largest employer used to be General Motors. Now it's Wal-Mart. The siren song of free trade has carried off the best of American jobs and creativity. Our institutions of higher education are increasingly educating foreign students who go back home and create companies that beat American businesses with American training and know-how. Our government borrows and spends to create jobs, adding to deficits and tax burdens that kill jobs. We rescue businesses "too big to fail" with the money of people too small to count. And Mitt Romney is okay with that.
Memo to the Occupy protesters:
Here are ten things we evil capitalists really think. Obviously, I don't expect to turn my Leftie readers in a single post; still, they might get a clearer idea of what we actually believe.
Not Your Grandfather's Republican Party. At one time, the bastion of balanced budgets and no free lunches, 70% of gross public debt through the last fiscal year was accumulated under the last three Republican presidents who ran deficits twenty out of twenty years averaging 3.9% of GDP. Having inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton, George W. Bush presided over a doubling in federal debt, simultaneously cutting taxes while running two wars on credit. Railing against domestic spending, the same administration implemented a large new unfunded prescription drug benefit. Yet now, as the opposition party, Republicans pontificate about the dangerous levels of gross public debt (now at 101.1% of GDP) and last summer set about playing chicken with a possible default on our financial obligations.
Superfrauds. Our government has the time to worry about school lunch menus in Boise, Idaho, but the Senate hasn't found the time to pass a budget in Washington, D.C., in nearly three years. H.L. Mencken famously wrote that every decent man is ashamed of his government. This one gives you little choice.
Superfrauds. The supercommittee's failure is victory because any so-called compromise would have meant the institution of tax hikes, and spending cuts would only be as good as the next Congress' emergency or new priority. But everyone understands that this entire process was theater. If members of Congress, with a $15 trillion debt and a trillion-dollar yearly deficit, can't find $1.2 trillion to cut in 10 years, the only reason is they aren't serious.
Failure or Success? Many people are lamenting the failure of the Congressional "Super Committee" to come up with an agreement on ways to reduce the runaway federal deficits. But you cannot judge success or failure without knowing what the goal was. If you think the goal was to solve the country's fiscal crisis, then obviously the Super Committee was a complete failure. But, if you think the goal was to improve the chances of the Obama administration being re-elected in 2012, it was a complete success.
They didn't fail — they succeeded in doing nothing. The supercommittee triumphed in accomplishing what it was truly intended to accomplish. It was created to kick the can down the road. The only thing that mattered was that it come into existence, and it did. Its invention made increases in the debt ceiling possible through the end of President Obama's term.
The Super Committee Was Not So Super — Exactly As Planned. When the 12 member super committee was dreamed up by Obama and his freakish liberal zombies in Washington, there was no intention for the "bi-partisan" group to pull off the spending cuts that they were tasked with figuring out. The triggers were supposedly put into place to encourage them to do their job, but in reality failure is exactly what the liberal democrats wanted. The trigger gives them a chance to gut the military, and cut programs like medicare... for the soul [sic] purpose of blaming the republicans and touting their belief that we dearly need ObamaCare.
Time to Break Apart the United States? The infiltration, infestation, and indoctrination of America's culture by elements inimical to decency, truth, and honor, has been going on for so long that a sizable percentage of the American public is, in effect, treasonous. I do not consider them to be my fellow countrymen, or women. I find listening to them a "fingers across a chalkboard" experience, and would just as soon live on a different planet, let alone in a different country. Compare the typical OWS mob to the people found at your average Tea Party rally, and you will have an idea of the sort of ideological divide that I am talking about.
Why Live in a Salad Bowl? There has been much talk in segments of the Patriot community, regarding the notion of some red States seceding from the overbearing Union once again, in order to re-institute proper Constitutional government. Wouldn't it be much easier to simply dissolve the Union entirely, and allow everyone start over? ... Free of the oppressive mandates, regulations, court rulings, debt, and taxes of the erstwhile Federal government, each State would be able to offer capitalists the world over, an environment conducive to moving their production facilities there, to create a thriving economy again. Local natural resources could be easily exploited again, absent absurd EPA regulations, and unemployment would virtually be nil in any State that truly wished it to be so.
Throw Them All Out — Including Politico. Here's some news for Politico: though there's little that unites the Tea Party and Occupy movements, they do share a disgust with Washington, and the way it has betrayed our nation's democratic hopes and principles. Left and right, the desire to "Throw Them All Out" is widely shared.
Obama Abandons (Private) Labor. The decision by the Obama administration to "delay" building the Keystone XL pipeline is a watershed moment in American politics. The implication of a policy choice rarely gets more stark than this. Put simply: Why should any blue-collar worker who isn't hooked for life to a public budget vote for Barack Obama next year?
The Bases of Mathematics are Intelligently Designed. The bases of mathematics with which this article is concerned are the natural things that mathematics is used to determine, such as power, acceleration, speed, and distance traveled. Also is explained is how even the simplest mathematics such as in arithmetic, like
The Cain - Kopechne Ticket. We are in a deadly serious, perhaps existential contest for the future of our country. The full apparatus of the left knows this. It is not coincidence that they have tried to destroy first Palin, then Bachmann, then Perry and now Cain. Enough! It is time to bloody some noses and put the left on notice that we shall fight for every inch of political turf. It's time to remind the American people that nobody drowned at the National Restaurant Association.
Will Someone Tell Us What Herman Cain Did? Since breaking the sexual harassment story about the presidential contender in late October, Politico alone has published more than 100 dispatches. TV networks aired a whopping 99 stories in the first nine days. And the Cain saga continues to merit front page treatment at major newspapers. Yet with every news outlet working overtime to keep the Cain story alive, we still know next to nothing about what Cain allegedly did.
Occupy Wall Street's Declaration of Dependence. [Scroll down] I have a much, much simpler proposal: get the government out of the economy. This means forbidding the government to fund anything but national defense and the courts and the bare minimum expenses of operating Congress. Abolish all subsidies to private enterprises and companies. Abolish most of the Cabinet, especially the Departments of Education, Energy, Agriculture, Commerce, Interior, Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, and Transportation. None of these offices and attendant bureaucracies has any legitimate purpose in a limited government. Keep the Copyright and Patent offices; they perform legitimate, rights-protecting functions. Abolish all civil service unions. Abolish 99% of the various rights-violating, regulatory bureaucracies. ... The goal of all this abolishing would be to discourage any political ambition but the desire to protect and uphold life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness.
The FDA Kills. The FDA makes it so expensive and difficult to sell drugs that there isn't an eager pack of companies rushing to the fill the gap. The free market would provide that, but government intervention, such as low Medicare reimbursement, strangles it. So people suffer. Does the FDA say it's sorry for its part and back off? Of course not. Regulators almost never do that. In fact, the FDA wants more power.
The Clinton effect. In defining an impeachment for perjury involving a sexual harassment lawsuit as a cheap attack, you cannot be — and will not be — taken as serious on the matter of two minor complaints about sexual harassment that combined cost one-tenth of the damages done to Miss Jones by the governor of Arkansas. The American electorate correctly sees the difference in the severity of the two cases.
Is Herman Cain Experienced Enough to be President? If all we care about is "experience," note that Benito Mussolini had a tremendous amount of it in 1939. Moammar Gadhafi had even more after his 42-year rule, but we nevertheless helped author his demise. With his half century of service, Fidel Castro is the most experienced non-royal leader of modern times. And next November, Obama will have more presidential experience than whoever will be running against him. Is he any better a statesman now than he was in 2008?
Where Keynes Went Wrong. It is generally recognized that the conceptual underpinnings for so-called stimulus programs lie in the theory developed by John Maynard Keynes in the 1930s. That the practical results of these programs in recent years have been negligible, if not negative, while their costs have been high, may be sufficient grounds for avoiding them in the future.
Define Sexual Harassment. What exactly constitutes sexual harassment? [Herman] Cain mentioned in an interview that he may have occasionally complimented a woman on the way her hair looked, or some other innocuous observations. Isn't that what men have been doing since the dawn of time? When did it become obnoxious to recognize and comment on a woman's looks?
Supercommittee's insuperable timidity. Does anyone really believe we can't find massive budget savings in a government that is awash in wasteful spending and rampant duplication; programs that are rife with corruption, fraud and inefficiencies; and agencies that are outdated, outmoded, unworkable, unneeded and, most important, unaffordable?
No Mitt, No Más. Sometimes it seems as if the GOP Establishment is sleepwalking off a cliff. In 1996, having scored the stunning victories of the off-year congressional elections, the GOP suits dutifully lined up behind the impossible Bob Dole. From the moment Americans realized their choices would be Clinton or Dole, "Bubba" was never behind one day in the polls. It's looking like déjà Dole all over again. Mitt Romney is the proverbial GOP next-in-liner.
Herman Cain's Missing Crucial Fourth "9". Herman Cain has proposed a brilliantly simple 9-9-9 Plan for funding the Federal Government. This tax plan is a combination nine percent "flat" income tax, a nine percent sales tax (VAT) and a nine percent corporate tax rate. There is, however, one glaring oversight. ... The problem is that Mr. Cain is one "9" short. That "9" is incorporating a Nine Year phase-out and repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment. This is crucial to the long-term success of his plan and to America's prolonged recovery from the failed politics of "Redistribution".
Government the Job Killer. The transcontinental railroad lost tons of money. The government never covered its costs, and most rail lines that used the tracks went bankrupt or continued to be subsidized by taxpayers. The Union Pacific and Northern Pacific — all those rail lines we learned about in history class — milked the taxpayer and then went broke. One line worked. The Great Northern never went bankrupt. It was the railroad that got no subsidies.
Hyperinflation: Can It Happen Here? In the middle of 1914, just before the war, a one pound loaf of bread cost [the equivalent of] 13 cents [in Germany]. Two years later it was 19 cents. Two years more and it sold for 22 cents. By 1919 it was 26 cents. ... In 1920, a loaf of bread soared to $1.20, and then in 1921 it hit $1.35. By the middle of 1922 it was $3.50. At the start of 1923 it rocketed to $700 a loaf. Five months later a loaf went for $1200. By September it was $2 million. A month later it was $670 million. The next month it hit $3 billion. By mid month it was $100 billion.
How Did Steve Jobs Do It without Obama? How did Steve Jobs create so many outstanding products without Barack Obama's investment? In barely three decades, Jobs helped create a tech revolution — from product to infrastructure — without a dollar of federal help. While snake-oil salesmen Obama claims to know the future and blow taxpayer dollars on it, Jobs and his peers hatched ideas that attracted billions of dollars of private capital. The result is a digital infrastructure that spans the globe totally independent of government subsidy.
Taking Cain Seriously. [Scroll down] None of this can be put across in the televised debates' explain-everything-in-30 seconds format. Nor is there any chance to elaborate his Sept. 7 debate remark that he admires Chile's private-public social security system. Or his flat-tax "9-9-9" proposal. (Or any of the candidates' policy ideas for that matter.) So voters get nothing, and Mr. Cain flounders.
On the other hand...
The Case Against Raising Cain. He is our Obama. An untested candidate with a golden tongue; a blank slate upon whom we can hang our dreams -- and fantasies. Social conservatives, be wary.
Nine Reasons Why Republicans Ought to Nominate Herman Cain. Herman Cain has demonstrated that he is a man who carries himself with a sense of humor, dignity, modesty, responsibility and gratitude towards the country that allowed him an opportunity to succeed. Does he know everything he needs to know to be President? No. But Cain is a quick study. He possesses the diligence necessary to turn whatever weaknesses he might possess into strengths.
The Tea Party vs. The Establishment. The stars are aligned for Mitt Romney. ... The Republican Party bigwigs, including key funders on Wall Street, are throwing their support to him. There's only one problem: He'll lose the general election. He'll lose the general election for a very simple reason: Nobody in the conservative base is excited about him. While the so-called GOP opinion leaders wax on about how super-electable he is, they fail to recognize that it is precisely that logic that gave us the unelectable John McCain.
Five Ways the Internet Is Ruining Our Culture. Everyone seems to be able to tell you about what makes the Internet great, but the ways that it negatively impacts us seem to be slipping under everyone's radar.
Abolish the Education Department? Abandoned Idea Gets New Life. [Scroll down] Indeed, every year from 1980-2000, Republicans included in their platform the plank: "The federal government has no constitutional authority to be involved in school curricula or to control jobs in the market place. This is why we will abolish the Department of Education," read the 1996 platform that accompanied the presidential nomination of then-Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole.
Does Romney Truly Embrace Tea Party Principles? Any Republican is a thousand times better for America than Obama. Obama is a mean-spirited, divisive man willing to sacrifice national black-white race relations to further his anti-America, socialistic, some say communist agenda.
Science for Stupid Idiots. Recently, Texas Governor Rick Perry took a lot of grief for the statement that "evolution is a theory" with "some gaps in it." ... There are gaps in every theory scientists have. The opposite of saying there are gaps is to say there are no gaps. Who in their right mind would say there are "no gaps" in any theory you could name? Rick Perry is simply in his right mind.
'How did we get here?' Finally, here's the answer. The state can no longer provide the services it has promised. The private sector can't provide jobs. The public sector, which picked up the slack, has overextended itself with jobs that can't be afforded, unemployment benefits that never end, health care that can't be paid for, and debts growing at an unsustainable pace.
Prosperity starts with Americans, not Uncle Sam. Never before in history has such overwhelming evidence failed to convince the smart-set governing class of the obvious: Government cannot create wealth. Instead, our rulers bitterly cling to the notion that the government can spend your money more wisely than you can. ... Mr. Obama did not invent the big-government annexation of our economy — he only accelerated it.
Perry Vs. Gore. Perry was Gore's Texas campaign manager in 1988, a fact that many purists say should disqualify him for the GOP nomination. Back then, Perry was a Democrat and Gore was a relatively conservative Democrat who had not yet invented the Internet or beheld an Earth hanging in the balance. Perry has seen the error of his ways. Gore has not.
Tighten the Web on Flash Mobs. Social media-incited disorder has erupted spectacularly across Britain, and flash mobs that loot and plunder are rampant in the U.S. ... Do we really want the freedom to have our shops looted as Internet-savvy delinquents tweet the next hapless target? If not, then British Prime Minister David Cameron's call to "stop people communicating via these websites... when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality" seems entirely prudent.
Expect a Third-Party Candidate in 2012. The United States is in the midst of what we would both call a prerevolutionary moment, and there is widespread support for fundamental change in the system. An increasing number of Americans are now searching beyond the two parties for bold and effective leadership.
The Tyranny of Crackpot Idea. [John Maynard] Keynes tried to make people believe that transferring money from one pocket to another made you wealthier, that destroying productive capacity of the economy made it healthier, and that lowering price of labor and other goods would not result in a higher demand for those goods. Keynes was a clever propagandist. But his principles have not survived the test of time.
The Government Has Rights? The government has one purpose and one purpose only and that is to protect our rights, not to jam laws down our throats for the "common good." The only thing that is good is what is good for the individual and what is good for the individual is to protect his right to his life, his liberty and his pursuit of his own happiness.
Rick Perry not a true conservative. One area where Perry's positions are virtually identical to Bush is immigration. When I ran for president in 2008, I tried to pressure the Republican candidates to take a hard line against illegal immigration. For this, Perry called me a racist. When he first took office as governor in 2001, Perry went to Mexico and bragged about his law that granted "the children of undocumented workers" special in-state tuition at Texas colleges, the first state in the nation to do so.
The Wasted Valor of the Navy SEALs. Last week, 30 American service personnel, including 22 Navy SEALs, died when their helicopter was shot down by Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. ... The fact is that the SEALs died in vain, and their valor was squandered by a nation led by incompetents and craven political hacks that have no idea how to win the war in Afghanistan after a decade of trying.
The War on Senator Pearce. Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce (R) is not yet a household name. Most Americans are unaware that he is one of the leaders fighting to have states enforce the rule of law regarding illegal immigrants. He has been at the forefront of this issue for the last twenty-five years but currently is facing a recall battle.
A titanic fiscal mistake. When the captain of the Titanic was warned repeatedly of icebergs ahead, he nonetheless made the decision not to slow down or stop the ship for the night. He was, after all, the captain of a ship that "God himself could not sink." With the passage of the debt-raising agreement, it makes a guy wonder if the Fedzillacrats in Washington believe they are in charge of a country and an economy that even their boneheaded economic policies cannot sink. They are wrong.
Take a Stand Against Rand. Democrats have not gained much white evangelical support on healthcare and environmentalism. In 2008 they successfully used guilt over segregation to elect the first African-American president, but that may not work again as concern over Obamanomics trumps the ghosts of generations past.
Debut of Made-in-China Social Security Checks. Discretionary spending refers to the budget appropriated each year. The discretionary budget is one third of the federal budget. Congress directly sets the level of discretionary spending ($1.24 trillion) and can choose to increase or decrease any programs. In 2012, 57 percent of the federal discretionary budget will be national defense. The rest will include education, health programs, and housing assistance.
What 'constitutional conservatism' means to me. I believe our founders knew what they were doing when they designed a limited government with specific, enumerated powers. I'm also convinced that many of our problems result from the federal government's insatiable — and unconstitutional — grab for power and money. On issues ranging from light bulbs to bailouts, to the Dodd-Frank banking legislation, Washington has been on a destructive spree of bureaucratic empire-building. It's time for that to stop.
Ten Lessons From Federal Spending. For more than the first 140 years of the country's existence, the federal government got by on about three cents out of every dollar. Yet somehow it sustained an army and a navy. We also had police, a judicial system, public education, roads, and railroads. We even had trolley cars and libraries. (I know the federal government did not pay for many of those government functions, but that is the point. Federalism used to mean something.) And through that same time, the country prospered and grew.
In Government, First, Do No Harm! A friend recently sent me a list of the "panics," "crises," "recessions," or "depressions" that have taken place in the United States and elsewhere since 1776. There was something that struck me immediately upon looking at my friend's list. ... Most of these economic "crises" were of short duration, and the government(s) at the time took no significant action. However, in the cases of the Great Depression (1929-1939) and the Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2010, the governments at the time took very significant actions, and the crises lasted longer than normal.
Federal spending doesn't work. Federal spending has soared over the past decade. As a share of gross domestic product, spending grew from 18 percent in 2001 to 24 percent in 2011. The causes of this expansion include the costs of wars, growing entitlement programs, the 2009 stimulus bill and rising spending on discretionary programs such as education. ... America's strong growth and high living standards were historically built on our relatively small government. The ongoing surge in federal spending is undoing this competitive advantage that we have enjoyed in the world economy.
Who Is Gary Johnson? Someone was missing from last week's Republican presidential debate, and that's too bad. He's an announced candidate who was a two-term governor of New Mexico, and he makes a case for strongly limited government. Who is he? Gary Johnson. He was left off the platform because the sponsors say he didn't meet their criteria: an average 2 percent showing in at least three opinion polls.
Where do we go to get our reputations back? In 2008 having elected and given immense power to a person with no experience, no school records, no verifiable birth certificate, and paying lawyers millions to keep these details of his history secret. What kind of a people or country born in freedom would be so careless as to take such a risk? How do we explain these errors in judgment to our children and grandchildren, and the world? We have let this man and his group of revolutionaries harm this nation and the entire world in no small way. How do we make amends for letting such things happen?
Politicians who refuse to resign. The failure to honorably resign by criminal, embarrassing, ineffectual, or physically incapacitated elected officials is a growing problem, symptomatic of ever-increasing amounts of power instilled in our federal government, the lust for retaining their share of that power by Washington, D.C., insiders, and ever-decreasing levels of personal integrity in American politics.
Taxation without representation:
Giffords Should Resign or Get Back to Work. It's unfortunate that Gabrielle Giffords was shot, but the people of Arizona's Eighth district deserve a Congressman. Right now, they don't have one because Gabrielle Giffords is either too incapacitated to work or too busy writing a book while they pay her salary. I'm not sure which it is, because there are news stories about both.
Rep. Giffords should resign her seat. Even from the limited information that has been made available, we know that for the near term Giffords cannot carry out her committee assignments, debate on the floor of the House, and, most importantly cast a vote. ... Isn't the obvious solution for her to resign and allow Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to call a special election to fill her seat? I know that this sounds cruel and heartless. After all, not only is Gabrielle Giffords not responsible for what happened to her, but in a sense she sacrificed herself, having been attacked while performing the quintessential democratic act of meeting with her constituents.
A Bill Inventors Cannot Afford. A bill before Congress threatens to stifle technical innovation coming from small business. Under current American patent law a crucial grace period exists providing intellectual property protection between the time an invention occurs and the time a patent is filed. ... HR 1249, the America Invents Act, abolishes this grace period, replacing it with one that creates unacceptable risk of loss of patent rights that no small business can afford.
Time for government attorneys to stand up to Obama. President Nixon ordered Archibald Cox fired from the job of "special prosecutor" on Oct. 20, 1973. Rather than follow the order, first Attorney General Elliot Richardson and then Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus quit. Richardson and Ruckelshaus had both told members of Congress that they wouldn't interfere with Cox's investigation, so they turned in their keys and in a stroke established a very high bar for government lawyers confronting their superiors on matters of principle.
The Editor says...
As I recall, the next guy in line was Robert Bork, and he fired Archibald Cox.
Shakespearean Tragedy, Talmudic Comedy. Congressman Anthony Weiner has announced his resignation. Had he done so at any time during his prior thirteen years of service, I would have been overjoyed. No one has opposed him more consistently than I, ever since Charles Schumer groomed him as his replacement. In truth, Weiner never was a Congressman; he served as proxy for Schumer who was serving as a Senator and Representative simultaneously. I defy any eager beaver researcher to find me a single instance of Weiner voting differently than Schumer on any bill.
The Right TV: 12 most conservative TV shows ever. [#5] Dragnet (1951-59, 1967-70): Dragnet was based on a simple, conservative premise: Cops are good, criminals are bad, and crime must be punished. Los Angeles detective Sgt. Joe Friday (Jack Webb) was the hard-nosed and efficient policeman tracking down the bad guys. The show never got its due for its realistic portrayals of crime and detective work. Every show ended with the perpetrator caught and sentenced. The remake of the show from 1967 to 1970 was decidedly conservative as well, standing up against the hippie idiocy of the period.
Voting for Huntsman? You might as well vote for John Kerry.
Jon Who? A former governor of Utah, Huntsman is a multimillionaire from a very wealthy family who has styled himself as a so-called "moderate," supporting certain measures considered by conservatives as not in the least acceptable. Notably, he has supported "marriages" between homosexuals, and so-called "cap and trade" legislation designed to deal with so-called (and non-existent) global warming, but in reality shoveling taxpayer funds into the hands of liberal groups and individuals to prevent something that isn't happening.
Voting for Romney? You might as well vote for Al Gore.
Romney is What's Wrong With the Republican Party. The so-called science of global warming is more media hype and Wall Street attempts to profit on trading carbon credits than it is real science. The scientific community is split on the topic with some climatologist predicting a new mini ice age. Mitt Romney's gullibility on this issue helps us understand why he has been so wrong on most of the vital issue of the last decade.
The political kiss of death:
Al Warms To Mitt. GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has a new, not-so-welcome friend: Al Gore, who extolled the candidate's promise to fight hard against global warming. Does Gore think Romney can't win?
Does President Obama Want to Live in a World Without ATMs? There's no doubt that human employees are increasingly being replaced by machines, which don't need health insurance or pensions and never send passive-aggressive e-mails. It's been the story of industrialization for more than a century, and the incentives for using technology over sentient beings have only grown since the recession.
Republicans Flicker On Light Bulb Ban Repeal. The Republican House is flinching on passing the simplest and most symbolic piece of legislation this term: repeal of the incandescent light bulb phase out. Amidst great fanfare and promises to restore limited government, the new majority is proving it isn't much different than the old majority.
More about mandatory fluorescent light bulbs.
Worse than an Affair. Let us imagine that some congressman had walked onto the House floor in his underwear. I think it is fair to assume that just about every Democrat and Republican in the country would demand his resignation. But why? That action is not illegal, and it certainly does not constitute a form of infidelity to his wife. The reason people would demand his resignation is that such behavior would disgrace the House of Representatives. That is the issue here.
The lying double standard. Corporate executives and directors are often forced to resign after making untrue statements about the businesses they oversee and are sometimes subject to both civil and criminal penalties, including jail. Many public officials who engage in far more damaging untruths are rarely forced to resign, let alone face civil and criminal penalties. Is it not time the double standard ended?
Are Our Politicians Stupid or Evil? That man is a fallen creature has never been more clearly demonstrated than by the behavior of our elected politicians in Washington. Most of them are highly educated lawyers who have studied American history in their universities, and yet have acted so stupidly as to have brought this great nation to the brink of financial disaster.
Read this article:
Obama's Road to Nowhere. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the median period of unemployment is now nine months -- the longest it's been since they've been tracking the numbers. Long-term unemployment is worse than in the Depression. Life goes slowly waiting for a fast-food job to open up. This is Main Street, Obamaville: All bumps, no road.
You might as well vote for Al Gore.
Romney: Climate Change is Real, Man Made. Presidential candidate Mitt Romney reiterated Friday [6/3/2011] that he thinks man has contributed to climate change and urged a reduction of greenhouse gasses -- a stance he has taken before, but one that nonetheless remains highly controversial within the Republican Party.
Romney reaffirms stance that global warming is real. In the first town hall of his freshly announced presidential campaign, Mitt Romney yesterday reaffirmed his view that global warming is occurring and that humans are contributing to it, a position that has been rejected in recent years by many Republicans as the issue has taken on a greater partisan tinge.
A Texan Riding To Republicans' Rescue? [Governor Rick] Perry and Texas are at war with the Obama administration, a war in which the White House literally let Texas burn as wildfires consumed millions of acres and endangered countless lives even as the president was flying Air Force cargo planes to Mexico where a few hundred acres were ablaze. Perry's Texas has led the fight against ObamaCare on the grounds that it is an unconstitutional usurpation of states' rights.
Obama's ineligibility: The U.S. government must be purged. The Obama issue is about complicity, negligence, avarice and cowardice. There are likely many who are complicit in a cover-up, many who were derelict in their duty to screen Obama and many selfish individuals who love their power and privileges more than their country. Smoking out Obama will be a tough and dirty business. None of our professional politicians want to soil their hands.
Dear Congress: Your credit application has been turned down. Thank you for your interest in the American Public Trust's Gold Card credit program. Rest assured your application has been given thorough and careful consideration by the American people. After reviewing the information provided in your application as well as your credit report, we regret to say that we are unable to extend you further credit at this time. The reasons for our decision are as follows: (1) Inadequate income. ...
Obama's Worst Enemy: Obama's worst enemy is Obama, and his downfall will commence when voters awaken to the fact that many of his current "crises" — and all the most critical ones — are self-inflicted. They don't simply come out of nowhere, in the form of "events," unforeseen and random, but are generated through acts of omission or commission by none other than Obama himself. This creates an opening that must not be overlooked by the GOP candidate, whoever that may be.
Dirty Pictures of Osama bin Laden. We are at war with a ruthless, barbaric enemy. The steps we took to extinguish Osama bin Laden were entirely justified — as is releasing the proof of his death, which Obama went to such great pains to obtain. Secreting the photo in the president's desk drawer is not going to win us any brownie points with the death-to-America crowd. Announcing the results of a DNA test is not going to satisfy the pics-or-it-didn't-happen crowd.
OBL's Death a Victory for the Adults. First, it is instructive that candidate Obama campaigned against the idea of even killing bin Laden. Now he's taking credit for masterminding the entire op and the military hating leftists are now ready to call him the return of Patton. But let's look at some background. What really happened is that the intel trail that ultimately culminated in Sunday's events started in 2007 at Guantanamo Bay. ... Obama is the beneficiary of tactics he campaigned against — that were performed at a location he campaigned against.
Debt Ceiling? It's Time for GOP To Let Chips Fall. The governing class in Washington has no excuse for not having addressed our spending issues and formulating a comprehensive federal debt retirement plan before we approached another debt ceiling threshold. At every possible opportunity, politicians convince themselves that it's always better to kick the can down the road — Democrats because they aren't remotely serious about debt reduction, Republicans because they're afraid of their own shadow.
The Biggest Legalized Theft of Middle Class American Wealth. The Federal Reserve and Department of the Treasury financial institution bailouts are nothing more than a legalized Ponzi scheme, bailing out irresponsible behavior by the banks, and the cost to middle class Americans dwarfs our spending on entitlements, Medicare/Medicaid, defense and everything else. Unfortunately, most of the American public does not realize exactly what the banks are doing and getting away with.
Eliminating the U.S. Department of Education: The Department of Education was established to promote "student achievement and prepare them for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and insuring equal access." Since 1979 when the Department of Education was created and with the passage of laws regulating education, such as the No Child Left Behind, the result has been an education system where compliance with laws becomes the rule of the day rather than the primary focus being quality education.
Will It Take A New Political Party to Save America? It is painful to even consider the possibility that America is moving into its Sixth Party System, as a new, conservative political party emerges to, eventually, replace the Grand Old Party. Yet events suggest this may be in the cards. ... We live in an era of American history when we should not discount even the highly unlikely as being impossible.
$4 Trillion In Cuts Is Just A Start. Who's the real extremist here? The one who recognizes that $10 trillion-plus in expected deficits over the next 10 years is a serious problem? Or those who insist there's no budget problem so bad that more spending and a massive tax hike on all Americans can't fix it? Truth is, our long-term fiscal problem is so severe that, absent immediate corrective action, our country's political and economic future is imperiled.
On the Road to An Idiocracy. If we are to avoid killing off all our brain cells we need to start asking "why" more often than we do. Why do we have to replace incandescent light bulbs with ones that contain toxic mercury? Is it because they are made in China? Where is the word "abortion" in the Constitution? The taxpayers fund Planned Parenthood abortions — why? The constitution does include the right to bear arms so why are there so many laws against them? Why do we spend so much money on bottled water when our city has the best tasting water anywhere and is perfectly safe? Who's making money off of these health scares?
Trump shows lightweights how to pound Obama in 2012. [Donald] Trump is doing the one thing all the other candidates are terrified of: Going straight at Mr. Obama. He doesn't believe the oft-repeated claim by the MSM that Mr. Obama is "unbeatable" in 2012. He doesn't think Mr. Obama is the greatest orator since Cicero (you don't see Mr. Trump with a teleprompter). And he thinks voters will understand when he lays out the complexities that America now faces.
End the War on Drugs Now. Despite federal and state expenditures of billions of dollars per year, severe punishments, and frequent unconstitutional raids on private homes, the War On Drugs is a failure. Since this futile war began, the number of drug users in the US has grown rather than shrink, and the rate of drug usage has grown along with the profits of drug cartels. America's Southern border has become very dangerous as a result of the War, and Mexico is a failing state because wealthy, well-armed drug cartels can afford to fight a regular war in that country and bribe (or assassinate) its officials. By any objective measure, the War On Drugs is a disastrous failure. It's time to end this madness now.
Big government crushes American standard of living. I am happy that Smith-Corona went bankrupt and that Western Union was forced to abandon its old business practices. If the government had bailed out these companies, we'd still be banging out papers on manual typewriters and communicating by telegram. Instead, the typewriter has been relegated to museums and messaging is done over phones that are smarter than the people who keep bailing out failing companies.
Will Ignorance Lead to a Second Obama Term? In the face of a dishonest and complicit mainstream media, it is up to all thinking Americans to make efforts to educate themselves, their neighbors, friends, colleagues, and family as to the dangers of four more years of Obama as President. For while the world can withstand four years of incompetence in the White House, eight years will likely result in a world forever changed, with America reduced to mediocrity and powerlessness, Islamic fundamentalism on an unimpeded rise to triumph over the West, and liberty and freedom replaced in many more parts of the world by tyranny and human rights abuses.
A Requiem for Detroit. Notwithstanding its failures, government continued to grow while city services — e.g., police and fire protection — continued to decline. Whites moving to the suburbs took much of the tax base out of the city in the 1960s. The latest census numbers show that blacks are now following in the path of the whites before them. Apparently they don't like crime and the lack of decent schools for their kids either. What's left is the city so embarrassingly exposed by the census figures, a place that people are fleeing as fast as they can. Think of all the dysfunctional measures you can: poverty rates, unemployment, crime, failing public schools, falling home values. Detroit has them all, and most of its indicators rank among the worst in the nation.
The Editor says...
Wherever socialist Democrats are in control, prosperity evaporates.
Postmaster: Dogs are attacking Detroit carriers. Postmaster Lloyd Wesley says there were 59 attacks by dogs last year, compared to 74 in Los Angeles and 10 in New York, both much larger cities.
A Hidden History of Evil. In the world's collective consciousness, the word "Nazi" is synonymous with evil. It is widely understood that the Nazis' ideology — nationalism, anti-Semitism, the autarkic ethnic state, the Führer principle — led directly to the furnaces of Auschwitz. It is not nearly as well understood that Communism led just as inexorably, everywhere on the globe where it was applied, to starvation, torture, and slave-labor camps. Nor is it widely acknowledged that Communism was responsible for the deaths of some 150 million human beings during the twentieth century. The world remains inexplicably indifferent and uncurious about the deadliest ideology in history.
Fascism Is Not Conservatism. Both communism and Nazism are evil totalitarian systems characterized by enormous power in the central government. It's true that in theory, Karl Marx predicted the eventual withering away of the state and the "dictatorship of the proletariat," when the people would rule, which was sheer fantasy because it was based on grossly erroneous assumptions about human nature, as history would repeatedly demonstrate. But no one can deny that communism, in practice as well as theory, is a form of socialism, as evidenced, among other things, by the Soviet Union's proud self-identification as a "socialist republic." Likewise, Nazism and fascism, by definition, are socialist systems, with the state owning or controlling the major means of industry and production.
Why you should see — and then read — 'Atlas Shrugged': The movie may not be particularly artful; neither is the book. Indeed, the popularity of the book defies typical expectation for what causes a book to be read — it is neither a melodramatic potboiler, nor a brilliantly conceived artistic masterpiece. It is instead what is called a "novel of ideas" — and typical of the genre, it is talky, preachy and pedantic. ... But let us be clear. Whatever the artistic faults of "Atlas Shrugged," the book is eminently readable — exactly because of what it is — a book full of ideas.
On the other hand...
Shrugging off Atlas Shrugged. Atlas Shrugged is, to put it bluntly, vastly overrated both as literature and philosophy. ... As literature the novel is sophomoric, more like a Marvel comic book than a novel. The heroes and villains who inhabit the pages of Atlas Shrugged are not so much characters as caricatures, and they are so predictable that they are boring.
Why I Am Not a Neo-Conservative: The Obama Administration, in my view, is the most dangerous administration in American history, and conservatives need to be very clear about the limits and objectives of American power so that they can lead the battle to restore our government to health. To accomplish this, neo-conservatives need to admit they were wrong, and return to the drawing board. They should give up the "neo" and become conservatives again.
Why is there no looting in Japan? Perhaps even more impressive than Japan's technological power is its social strength, with supermarkets cutting prices and vending machine owners giving out free drinks as people work together to survive. Most noticeably of all, there has been no looting, and I'm not the only one curious about this.
Tepid Tea. [The House Republicans'] pathetic excuse for federal budget cuts betrays the 2010 electoral mandate of the American people ... If John Boehner's tears are shed only for his personal climb out of poverty into power, then he should retire from public service and go sit on his laurels somewhere. The American people are outraged at what the "elites" are doing to this country, and if John Boehner and his coterie of Republican followers haven't got the stomach to stand up to them, then they should get out of the way of people who do.
When emergency strikes count on yourself and never the government. In a state of emergency, the school gymnasium or sports arena in Small Town North America, or anywhere in the world for that matter, could be a more sustainable port in the aftermath of the storm. ... Governments big on nanny states are against stockpiling and some require public panic for ultimate control. But the custodians of schools, the managers of arenas could stockpile life-sustaining items on the QT.
Obama's two most useful idiots. Proof positive that Republicans who cross the bi-partisan aisle too many times come back as Democrat dupes: Senator John McCain and "Independent" Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman. In their newfound state of 'civility' the senators are flying not Old Glory but are white flagging orchestrated democracy movements in the Middle East.
Barry Goldwater's Rock-Solid Constitutional Stand Resonates Today. In his 1964 presidential campaign, he talked about the need for smaller government. His view was considered quaint. Today the choice appears to be between smaller government and bankruptcy. When Goldwater said Social Security was actuarially unsound, many scoffed. Today few economists deny the problem. In October 1964, he voted against Medicare. Today the program is rapidly becoming the fiscal mess that Goldwater said was intrinsic to central planning. Plenty of his other ideas, once dismissed as too radical, are reality.
Runaway Trains of Bureaucracy. Government programs succeed through failure. A program that actually "solved" whatever problem prompted its creation would be wiped out. A bureaucrat who runs a tight ship, and brings his operation in under budget, will be "rewarded" with a smaller budget. Every single organ of our federal government is working tirelessly to solve a problem that is much worse than originally anticipated, and therefore requires increased funding. When was the last time you heard of a big federal program that was shut down ahead of schedule and under budget, because it completed its mission?
Cuts That Shock. The House has passed a bill that trims $61 billion from roughly $3.8 trillion in spending in the current fiscal year. If the GOP can't even get this small cut through, will Washington ever get serious about the debt?
The Editor says...
If it were up to me, I'd cut out all federal funding for the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, HUD, the Department of the Interior, the EPA, NPR, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, Planned Parenthood, Amtrak, windmill generators, ethanol, the United Nations, NASA, the Office of the First Lady, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board, the African Development Foundation, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the Advisory Committee on Human Radiation Experiments, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Export-Import Bank of the United States, the Farm Credit Administration, the Federal Labor Relations Authority, the Federal Housing Finance Board, the Women's History Commission, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Legal Services Corporation, the Merit Systems Protection Board, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science, the National Education Goals Panel, the National Skill Standards Board, the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the Office of Personnel Management, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, the Peace Corps, the President's Interagency Council on Women, the Railroad Retirement Board, the Selective Service System, the US Agency for International Development, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the US International Development Cooperation Agency, the US Trade and Development Agency, the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, the Government Information Locator Service, the National Consortium for High Performance Computing, the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, the Arctic Research Commission, the Joint Board for the Enrollment of Actuaries, the Marine Mammal Commission, the National Gambling Impact Study Commission, the Office of Disability Employment Policy, the Task Force on Agricultural Air Quality Research, the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. Then I'd cut about half of the money being spent on AFDC, TANF, WIC, Medicaid, SCHIP, Head Start, school lunches and food stamps. And then I'd reduce the minimum wage by about half, and after that I'd eliminate or privatize most of the Department of Commerce, Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the FCC, the EEOC, OSHA, the FDA, the TSA, and the Postal Service. So, if you like big expensive government, don't vote for me!
Government yard sale could help bring down national debt. The federal government reportedly owns more than one fourth of the land in the United States. According to the "Budget of the U.S. Government for FY2010," at the end of FY 2008, the federal government held $767 billion in land, and $421 billion in "mineral rights." In addition to land, the Office of Budget and Management reports that Uncle Sam also owns more than $1.17 trillion in fixed reproducible capital (things like buildings and machinery) and $290 billion in inventory.
Time to Stop Making Excuses When It Comes to Fighting Piracy. If we are serious about this threat, all we need to do is to authorize the Navy to sink any suspected pirate vessels that are sighted unless they surrender immediately; and if they do surrender, to bring back the suspected pirates for trial in the U.S. even if they have not menaced a U.S.-flagged vessel. This does not require a major military commitment. All it requires is making more effective use of the force already in place and making use of legal authorities that have been in place for hundreds of years. Piracy, after all, is the original international crime.
Four problems that can only exist if Big Government creates them.
What Big Government Can Do. [Scroll down] Government, for example, is indispensable in the creation of high unemployment. Left to their own devices, people will generally find uses for each other's talents. Every individual is both a producer and consumer, employee and customer. The United States is rich in knowledge and natural resources. Given stable currency, reliable access to credit, and basic consumer protections, business ventures will be created to fill the needs of any given population. Large groups of people create opportunities merely by existing. The heavy hand of Big Government creates massive distortions in this process.
A sinking ship and a rising tide of red ink. What if you had a choice between trying to be a hero and possibly dying ... or doing nothing and almost certainly dying? What would you do then? That is essentially the choice facing the Congress of the United States — and by extension the rest of us — as we look into the maw of a $15 trillion national debt. Survival or death?
Note To Republicans: Don't Just Rein in the EPA, Abolish It. It's clear that President Richard Nixon's goal in creating the EPA was to put an agency in place that would fill a research and advisory role for both himself and future presidents. There was no indication that he intended an ideologically driven juggernaut that not only researched but actually took unto itself the power to mandate the most stringent of eco-centered, blatantly anti-capitalist environmental guidelines and regulations imaginable.
Defund the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has hit the ground running with its greenhouse-gas regulations. But congressional Republicans are just getting around to introducing well-intended, but futile legislation to stop the agency. There is another way. The GOP could rescue us from the EPA as soon as March, but it won't. Does the GOP have a secret strategy? Has it forgotten the election? Or is it afraid of the EPA?
More about the EPA.
A Modest $500 Billion Proposal. My proposal would first roll back almost all federal spending to 2008 levels, then initiate reductions at various levels nearly across the board. Cuts to the Departments of Agriculture and Transportation would create over $42 billion in savings each, while cuts to the Departments of Energy and Housing and Urban Development would save about $50 billion each. Removing education from the federal government's jurisdiction would create almost $80 billion in savings alone. Add to that my proposed reductions in international aid, the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security and other federal agencies, and we arrive at over $500 billion.
The 'rational' exuberance of spending other people's money. To sink or swim? That is the $15 trillion question. It's now up to the American people to decide whether the American experiment in self-government will stay afloat through reason and sacrifice or else sink into oblivion as a result of self-deception and greed.
A Sputnik Moment? From a strategic point of view, Sputnik was a Soviet blunder of the first magnitude. If the Americans had gone first, it would have given Russia a chance to demonize all space operations as imperialist aggression in the heavens. Every U.S. satellite launch would have been denounced as a crime against humanity. The U.S. space program in both its civil and military aspects would have been crippled. But from a propaganda point of view, Sputnik was a triumph, and in this they were aided and abetted by America's Democrats.
Stop the Fraud — Freeze the Debt Ceiling. Cuts are not politically viable in our democratic welfare state. Generations have been conditioned to "gimme" politics. As a result, no politician can run and win on a platform of "vote for me and this is what I will take away from you." That is why cuts never come and spending rises inexorably. That is why the debt limit will be raised again (and again and again) until the dollar and economy collapse.
Digital Dark Age Ahead? [Scroll down] The danger is that as more and more of our lives is committed to digital, only some portions of that data will be transferred to new media, and the losses will compound with each successive generation. Eventually you are left with a gaping hole in history, a vast ocean of unrecoverable information rotting away in obsolete machines. Of course, if, instead of saving your college novel on a floppy disk, you had typed it out on paper and stuck it in a drawer, you could easily pull it out again and start working on it twenty years later — no translation software required.
Fear of a Red Planet. I often hear talk radio hosts and politicians condemn China's nefarious role as the largest stakeholder in American debt. How is it China's fault that Washington spends $1 trillion more than it takes in in revenue?
Can Our Union be Saved? The spending path that Congress has chosen for the last half-century is unsustainable and will end up with economic collapse but little or nothing can be done about it unless I'm grossly wrong about the American people. Americans who detest our country and those who love our country are hell-bent, wittingly or unwittingly, on destroying it.
Report Card on Obama's First Two Years. Two years ago today, Barack Obama was inaugurated as president of the United States. Are you better off today than you were two years ago? Numbers don't lie, and here are the data on the impact he has had on the lives of Americans.
What's so scary about Sarah? If you don't like Sarah Palin, that's your business. But if you try to shut her up, that's everybody's business.
Laughter as the Cure for Liberalism. "Liberal" and "unfunny" are perhaps the two best words to describe most political cartoons. But a rare conservative series is helping to change this. Diversity Lane is a political cartoon series that follows the exploits of a hyper-liberal family and their eight-year-old conservative daughter. Since 2008, Diversity Lane has been the only conservative cartoon series that continually and convincingly skewers the PC left.
What Congress Should Cut. Since 2007, Congress has been on an unprecedented spending binge. That means a first and obvious budget-cutting step would be to return discretionary spending to the baseline before things got so out of control. If Congress returned to the baseline before the supposedly "temporary" stimulus bill of 2009, $177 billion per year would be saved, according to calculations by FreedomWorks based on figures from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office.
China: Danger Before the Doom? With Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington, there's a lot of talk about the rise of China as an economic and military power. But the Chinese may have only a small window in time to assert global dominance — and Chinese leaders have to know it. China is, perhaps, twenty years from the start of a demographic implosion, one that will cause enormous internal strains, economically and socially. Could awareness of the hard demographic realities that lie ahead for China drive the Chinese to advance their interests militarily, if need be, before China is hampered by an aging population?
Free the Dictionary. Control words and you control truth. George Orwell understood this so well that he believed one of the first things every totalitarian ideology does is redefine the words in a language, purposefully, forcefully and relentlessly. In his novel 1984, he called this artificial language of totalitarianism Newspeak. Orwell knew that, as someone once said, "you will not prevail just because you are right. If you know something but cannot communicate it, it's as though you don't know it." Take away the words and you take away the power to express a contrary thought. And the best way to do this is to torture words until they meant what the narrative said they should say; by changing meanings until only the allowable meanings were left.
Allan West is an American hero. Allan West, former Army lieutenant colonel, is a great American who consciously chose doing the right thing over furthering his 22-year long military career. He is a role model for all patriotic Americans.
87% Of Congressional Reps Supporting Comcast/NBC Merger Got Money From Comcast. If our elected officials are going to accept large donations from companies and then legislate in their interests, it would make sense to require those elected officials to wear patches indicating who's funding them, a la Nascar uniforms.
The Next Obama Disaster. In any other administration, Obama's energy policies would be dominating the political debate. It is only because the administration has pursued so many disastrous policies — government medicine, bailouts, faux stimulus, unheard-of deficits — that energy has taken a back seat. It will not be long, however, before rising energy costs are again in the forefront of economic anxiety and political debate.
Travesty in Texas. With Texas judge Pat Priest imposing a sentence of three years in prison on former House majority leader Tom DeLay, it is not an exaggeration to say that this is the culmination of an undeserved, unjustified, and unconscionable act of political persecution. It is the result of an abusive prosecution that exemplifies the drive to criminalize politics and to make the ordinary processes of raising and spending funds for political campaigns a crime.
Washington DC is a police state.
Walled-Off Washington. It's hard to remember, but Washington wasn't always a city of walls. Thomas Jefferson held a public reception at the White House after his second inaugural, and citizens were able to freely wander through the building to personally ask presidents like Abraham Lincoln for jobs and other favors. Harry Truman took long walks around Washington each morning protected by just a handful of Secret Service agents. Capitol Hill had no roadblocks or barricades, and cars and trucks passed directly in front of the White House as they drove down Pennsylvania Avenue, one of the city's busiest thoroughfares.
The GOP's last stand. If the Republicans do not adhere to their principles, the party will be swept into the dustbin of history — just as were their predecessors, the Whigs. Republicans insist that they have changed their big-government spots. Great Society Republicanism is out; Goldwater-Reagan conservatism is in. Call me skeptical.
Socialism by Other Means. As I pondered the direction our government had taken over the previous year, I looked at the definition of socialism by typing "define: socialism" into Google. The first definition presented was from Princeton's wordnet and read as follows: "a political theory advocating state ownership of industry." The definition feels woefully lacking. Ownership denotes control, and the state is certainly getting into the business of controlling industry. Our government has exerted control over enterprise via legislative fiat more over the last year than at any other time since FDR's power-grab during the Great Depression.
Why the Constitution is Better Than Marx. In 1787, the Constitution proclaimed a political philosophy that has led to greater well-being and happiness for more people over more centuries than anything Europe's totalitarians ever did. But precisely because the Constitution limits the greed of the power-hungry, it is always under assault. Every generation needs to understand that because human nature has not changed since 1800. Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler are alive somewhere today, because greed for absolute power is part of human nature. Look at the absolute dictators around the world; they are no different.
Republican Congressman: Ban Funding of Obamacare in Every Appropriations Bill. Rep. Steve King (R.-Iowa) says that House Republicans should include language that prohibits any funding for implementation of Obamacare in literally every appropriations bill that passes the House of Representatives this year, thus forcing a showdown on the issue with the Democratic majority Senate and President Barack Obama. "Somebody's going to blink," King told CNSNews.com. "It'll be President Obama or it'll be House Republicans.
To Win, Obama Has to Fool Some Folks All the Time. The hot-stove league in national politics is in a tizzy about whether President Obama will move to the center in the next two years. Most in Washington say he will because he must. I say he won't because he can't. You have to be a centrist to really move to the center, and if the last two years prove anything, it is that Obama's definitely not a centrist.
Government as a Criminal Enterprise. The so-called Stimulus Act was nothing more than Representatives and Senators throwing every state and local project into a huge spending bill and then claiming it would create jobs. As has been the case for decades, the only jobs that get created from such largess are government jobs, while businesses large and small are required to waste thousands of hours and thousands of dollars filling out government forms. There's a word for that. It's called communism.
Finding Reverse Gear in the New Year. The incoming 112th Congress has a lot of work to do... and several important things to undo. President Obama has already used his first weekly radio address of the new year to declare Democrats and Republicans have a "shared responsibility to move this country forward." On the contrary, the Republicans have a duty to make 2011 the year America finds its reverse gear.
The Editor says...
Obama is trying to share the blame, not the responsibility. The citizens have made it abundantly clear that they don't want the country to go "forward" on Obama's road to socialism.
Moscow's Blizzard / New York's Blizzard. [Russia's prime minister Vladimir] Putin now hires and fires governors and mayors at will. He owns and operates all the national television broadcasters, he executes journalists who do not toe his line, and he jails anyone, like Khodorkovsky, who stands even the slightest chance of challenging him politically. Slowly but surely, he is abolishing civil rights throughout the criminal justice system, and using any sign of disorder as an excuse for further and more draconian crackdowns. Yet for all that, Putin is vulnerable just as were his Soviet ancestors, because his misguided policies undermine economic and political stability. Yet Putin has found himself with the great good fortune of Barack Obama's election as president.
Congress's Monstrous Legal Legacy: The historians will long be fighting over the legislative legacy of the 111th Congress. As to its legal legacy, the only real question is whether this just-finished Democratic Congress was the most unserious in decades, or the most unserious in history. That much is clear from the recent ObamaCare court proceedings.
Kudzu: A Lesson in Big Government Failure. Wherever you may go in the southeastern United States, you will see a vine swallowing whole buildings and forests. It is as relentless as Sherman, destroying whole areas of the South. Chances are you've seen the plant before, even if you don't know exactly what it is. The vine is called kudzu, and it symbolizes all that is wrong with Big Government.
'Compliance': The Word That Sunk a Million U.S. Jobs. Costs not related to the quality of the end product — costs created entirely by overbearing government — have destroyed our manufacturing sector.
Buh-Bye Ms. American Pie. For the past year, masterful Canada Free Press researcher Sandy Williams has been probing the Spider's Web of the corporate and government world underworld by joining the dots to show through research how a few people interacting together through a network of well-funded organizations control the lives of ordinary Americans.
Kill The Lame Duck. It is an anachronism a constitutional amendment tried to kill. It lets defeated legislators wreak political and economic havoc without consequence. Like the dodo, the lame duck should be extinct.
A death panel for government: Ronald Reagan observed that a federal program is the nearest thing to eternal life on this Earth. With President Obama's budget forecasting nearly doubled expenditures by the year 2020, governmental red ink appears equally immortal. Next year, Congress should pilfer an idea from the Texas state legislature that would give wasteful departments the dignified burial they have long deserved.
Obama's double bubble. Americans have lost more than $4 trillion in assets since the housing market collapsed in 2006. Risky government mortgage lending regulations helped inflate prices beyond reason, but those policies have not gone away. Instead, they've just moved into a new home, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
The Only Thing That Will Save Us Now Is Fear Itself. Our government is bankrupt, its deficit is insurmountable, and at both the federal and state levels, we've run up more debt than can possibly be repaid. This isn't a political thing; it's a numbers thing. Either everything I've ever learned about math and economics is wrong, or we're on the verge of going down. The only possible way to come through safely — and even so, the odds are against us — will be to frighten ourselves so badly that we'll be willing to do things that in normal times we simply could not imagine doing.
Repeal the 26th Amendment!. Adopted in 1971 at the tail end of the Worst Generation's anti-war protests, the argument for allowing children to vote was that 18-year-olds could drink and be conscripted into the military, so they ought to be allowed to vote. But 18-year-olds aren't allowed to drink anymore. We no longer have a draft. In fact, while repealing the 26th Amendment, we ought to add a separate right to vote for members of the military, irrespective of age. As we have learned from ObamaCare, young people are not considered adults until age 26, at which point they are finally forced to get off their parents' health care plans.
Why Barack Obama doesn't much care for Britain: Let's review the evidence. President Obama received from Gordon Brown a pen-holder made from the timbers of a Royal Navy anti-slavery vessel, and reciprocated with DVDs. He silkily downgraded the UK from "our closest ally" to "one of our allies". He gave the Queen an iPod full of his own speeches. He used the Louisiana oil spill to attack an imaginary company called "British Petroleum" (it has been BP for the past decade, ever since the merger with Amoco gave it as many American as British shareholders). He sent a bust of Winston Churchill back to the British Embassy. ...
Who runs America? The nation, the media tells us, is all agog over the results of the presidential election. What they won't tell the American people is that the outcome won't make a dime's worth of difference — the president-elect will simply march to the tune of those wonderful caring folks who stand behind the scenes and pull the strings. This is not simply my opinion. You read what FDR wrote about the people who ran things when he was around, and they continue to run things today.
Book review:
Poor Lenin's Almanac. Instead of attacking the left, its mentality, and its preconceptions head-on by way of dates, the historical record, and ideological analysis, [Bruce] Walker has instead chosen an oblique approach. With Benjamin Franklin's original work as a model, he utilizes a series of twisted maxims representing typical leftist ways of thinking to present us with a much clearer map of the leftist psyche than we might otherwise see.
How America got lost: A look back at the past 50 years. [Scroll down] Today, everything has been turned on its head — and what's worse, plenty of people are glad of that. Our weaker economy has been a boon to the Third World and those who promote "social justice" at the expense of the American worker. Our weakened families have been a boon to government control of our personal decisions. Our weakened morals have allowed liberty to be mistaken for license, resulting in an ever more narcissistic culture than panders to appetites instead of aspiring to greatness. Our weakened military gives strength to those who would leave us at the mercy of their misguided conception of the goodness of human nature. Our weakened education system has compounded all of this by failing to teach our citizens the truth, leaving them untethered from their own heritage and adrift in a sea of moral relativism.
God Bless Barack Obama. In literature, deus ex machina refers to a plot device which resolves what appears to pose an intractable problem. And, as I explain, I think Obama is ours — a character who appears out of nowhere with a cast of appointees so preposterous and an agenda so irrational and offensive to Americans that he has shocked us out of our torpor, inducing millions of us out of our comfy chairs and to the barricades.
Is Illegal Immigration Moral? If a guest ignores the law — and thereby often must keep breaking more laws — should citizens also have the right to similarly pick and choose which statutes they find worthy of honoring and which are too bothersome? Once it is deemed moral for the impoverished to cross a border without a passport, could not the same arguments of social justice be used for the poor of any status not to report earned income or even file a 1040 form?
In Plain Sight. Communists no longer hide what they're doing. Now they boldly spout their anti-American rhetoric at every opportunity. In fact, some of them are openly calling for an armed revolution now, to bring down our Republic — while hiding behind the very Constitution they seek to destroy. ... So brace yourselves. No matter how we try to avoid it, armed conflict is coming — because our enemies will deliberately bring it. They WILL get violent, because that's what Communists do. That's the standard next phase of a Communist take-over, and the only "peaceful resolution" they want is your surrender.
Conservatives Should Not Be Celebrating the Election Results. [Scroll down] The ruling elite is still composed of self-styled aristocrats who know what is best for you, your family, and your children. They still look down on the masses as unwashed and slightly stupid. They still possess the same arrogance that allowed them to pass TARP and the auto bailouts over such huge numbers of people in bipartisan opposition. The bribery and corruption is still there and as virulent as ever. Furthermore, the aristocracy in Congress still exempts itself from laws it imposes on the serfs.
Filibuster in Danger in Lame-Duck Session. Liberals don't like the filibuster. They want to rid the Senate of it in the next few weeks so newly re-elected Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) can exclude Republicans from all aspects of the legislative process. Conservatives should watch closely to see if Reid tries to exterminate the filibuster from the Senate rules without a fair vote.
We Won — Now What? Even the sparse wins the subversive left managed to pull out on Tuesday were riddled with chicanery, cheating, union payoffs, and the buying of votes with "free lunches." Harry Reid's systemic corruption garnered a win funded by millions of dollars from public-sector unions. It was all in the game. Same for California — a state from which decent, hardworking Americans (aka Republicans) have been fleeing, a state destroyed by a union choke hold. ... But despite the voter fraud, the SEIU/ACORN thugocracy, and the illegitimate tactics, the people spoke, and the people won. Now what?
Desert Storm vet explains decision to leave Air Force after 22 years. I never expected to write this letter, but my Mom e-mailed me to get information about my career for a writeup on Veterans Day, and as this is the first such holiday in 22 years when I will not be on active duty, I felt compelled to let you know why I decided to quit.
Vote as if your children's and grandchildren's future depend on it. 'The Campaign That Never Ended on November 4, 2008', comes to an abrupt, merciful and undignified end tomorrow night. Most of the Democrats have been greedily picking the pockets of the poor, begging — on an almost daily basis — breaking the backs of the most vulnerable: the poor they claim to represent.
A Stark Choice Between European Model Or the American Way. Dramatic developments in Europe in the past few weeks have graphically demonstrated the importance of America's upcoming November 2 elections. Coming midway through President Obama's term, there is little doubt these elections constitute a referendum on his philosophy, policies and performance. Any U.S. citizens who doubt the significance of their impending votes need only contemplate Europe to see the consequences of further pursuing the Obama agenda.
Democrats Call Lisa Murkowski A Liar. It was troubling when Murkowski broke her word to voters and refused to abide by the results of the Republican primary as promised. If these accusations are legitimate, all in all, it does not speak well of Lisa Murkowski's character. And character does matter. She has invoked the name of the late Ted Stevens on her behalf. He can't speak for himself. However, it appears some individuals Murkowski has claimed endorse her candidacy can — and they are flatly denying it.
Obama's October Surprise? [Scroll down] He has a couple of options. First, he can hope that a national security crisis erupts that will put him in a positive light as a decisive leader. Second, he can try to manufacture a success or try to force a success before November. Now would certainly be a great time to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. The other option is to quietly push for foreign help by encouraging a country like Iran to feign an interest in real peace.
Proud To Be a Republican. The quality of many Republican senatorial and congressional candidates in the 2010 election is the highest in modern memory. So angry are many Americans at what the left is trying to do to America that spectacularly bright and accomplished individuals from every walk of life have decided to leave their professions and run for office.
If the Chilean Mine Had Been in Colorado: What if Copiopo was located on the western slope of Colorado? Would the story have played out in the same manner? Would the spirit of the American citizen have been dampened by the wet blankets of bureaucracy and political correctness?
Capitalism Saved the Chilean Miners. If those miners had been trapped a half-mile down like this 25 years ago anywhere on earth, they would be dead. What happened over the past 25 years that meant the difference between life and death for those men? Short answer: the Center Rock drill bit. This is the miracle bit that drilled down to the trapped miners. Center Rock Inc. is a private company in Berlin, Pa. It has 74 employees. The drill's rig came from Schramm Inc. in West Chester, Pa. Seeing the disaster, Center Rock's president, Brandon Fisher, called the Chileans to offer his drill. Chile accepted. The miners are alive.
Rules for Radical Conservatives Will Help Us Save America. [Saul] Alinsky took his material from neighborhood bullies who got the better of him throughout his childhood. He then moved up to getting lessons from thuggish big labor and the Capone gang in Chicago. [Michael] Walsh, on the other hand, used the inimitable Christian giant, C.S. Lewis, and John Milton, of Paradise Lost brilliance, to conceive his all-American answer to Alinsky's luciferian treatise.
Congress On Steroids Slinks Out Of Town. In 2008, rather than face the looming housing crisis, with the potential for a broad market crash that would shortly devastate a generation, Congress dropped everything to have an investigation into steroid use in baseball. ... If this same Congress cared 1% as much about the debasement of the dollar, the sagging economy and the federal budget deficit as it did about the reliability of baseball statistics, we could all relax.
Blacks still love Obama, others not so much. Since Obama's name is not on any ballot Nov. 2, the proportions of Americans who like or dislike the fellow on Oct. 1 of a midterm election year shouldn't matter, in theory. However, history indicates otherwise. Presidents with approval ratings below 50% at midterm time see their party suffer substantial losses in its congressional membership, regardless of how much explaining and blaming the president attempts in the campaign leading up to what becomes, in effect, a referendum on the president.
The Editor says...
Of course the mid-term election is a referendum on the incompetent * President who can't utter a coherent sentence without the aid of a teleprompter*. It is also a referendum on ACORN,* the Black Panthers,* the EPA,* mandatory socialized medicine,* abortion,* illegal immigration,* a President who detests America,* a President who bows down to King Abdullah,* gun control,* Nancy Pelosi,* Elena Kagan,* czars,* Nationalizing General Motors and Chrysler,* the illegal firing of Inspector General Gerald Walpin,* Obama's lethargic response to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,* granting INTERPOL immunity from U.S. law,* revealing the exact number of nuclear warheads in the U.S. arsenal,* fraternizing with dictators in other countries,* using the National Endowment for the Arts as a propaganda tool,* putting a guy in charge of the IRS who owes $34,000 in taxes,* and it is about saving this country from intentional destruction at the hands of a "community organizer"!*
Echoes of the Great Depression. This may not be your grandfather's Great Depression, but many aspects of today's situation would remind him of the 1930s. If the recession that officially ended a year ago feels uncomfortably surreal to you yet familiar to him, it's probably because the recovery went missing.
The long, but necessary, road back from big government. What on earth did we do before government? How did we manage? Who helped the sick, the poor, the needy and the incapable? Who stepped in when disaster struck? Only older people have any memory of a world with much less government. Nobody born after World War II in Europe, Russia, or North America has any experience of less government. National governments existed for one purpose, to defend the people from attack. Income tax was introduced as a temporary measure to fund this role. The tax still exists and the government is using the money for almost everything but defense.
Stop Printing Money. The nearly $1.7 trillion in new money printed by the central bank to ease the financial crisis didn't do much good, and its new plan for "quantitative easing" won't work much better.
Two Words for Republicans to Remember: 'I Won'. Certainly most people reflexively consider Adolf Hitler to be the epitome of evil. Yet in the historical annals of genocidal maniacs, Hitler doesn't even place second. His murder of six million Jews, along with five million others, relegates him to third place among the world's all-time butchers. Communist Russia's Josef Stalin comes in second with a total of twenty million killed, although some historians contend it might be twice that number. And then there's Chinese Communist Mao Zedong, who's literally in a class by himself: he gets "credit" for between forty and seventy-seven million exterminations. So why is Nazism utterly reviled even as Communism gets a historical pass?
A People of Life. From the sermon at Barbara Olson's funeral: ["]What did Americans do when they heard the shocking news and saw the devastation? Did they take to the streets with signs and placards, marching with fists upraised, saying, "Death to terrorists!" No, they did not. What did they do? They took to the streets — in search of places to give blood. In fact, in some places so many of them that there was a seven-hour wait to give blood. They took to the streets to bring food to those who were rescuing people. They took to the streets to go to church, to hold candlelight vigils, to pray.["]
Everything, literally, depends on this election. We will be choosing whether to stand up and fight for the America of liberty and law conceived by our founders, or to stand down and allow our "shining city upon a hill" to be demolished. We will decide whether to preserve and strengthen the American Dream for our children and grandchildren or to abandon our descendants to unexceptional lives in a gray socialist welfare state.
Documentary to Reveal the Extent of 2008 Voter Fraud. I am a documentary filmmaker, a Democrat. During the 2008 primaries, I was asked by a former congressional investigator to watch for and document any voter fraud occurring in the Democratic Party caucuses. Complaints had been filed, claims that Hillary Clinton had won the popular vote but lost the caucus vote. What I witnessed in Texas — and later in many other states — were things I could never forgive.
Transcending the Becklash. It's remarkable that one man with a microphone talking about God and American values could inspire such paranoia. Yet, many on the Left didn't bother to listen to what Glenn Beck had to say on Saturday [8/28/2010] during his "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington, D.C., instead allowing their fear and loathing of the popular political commentator decide what his real message just had to be. Glenn Beck tried to stretch out a hand across the political divide and liberals smacked it aside.
OK, you pick the 20 greatest Americans. [For example,] Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain. A college professor who volunteered for the Civil War, Chamberlain learned military tactics, rose to general and received the Medal of Honor for his service at Gettysburg.
Defining Conservatism Up: Part I. Conservatives are in danger of defining conservatism down so that they can win big in the next election (and the next), casting away essential principles in order to hustle ever more disgruntled bodies into the big Republican tent. This big-tentism is a big mistake.
Defining Conservatism Up: Part II. If we are spiritual and material creatures made in the image of God with a defined moral good we will set ourselves up much differently as a society than if we are mere ephemeral bodies accidentally contrived by a mindless cosmos with no moral goal other than the pursuit of physical pleasure and the avoidance of physical pain. In large part, the history of the Western slide downward is essentially one of increased secularization; that is, a slide from the first view to the second.
Taking Back Our Constitution. Americans, the Constitution of the United States of America doesn't belong to us anymore. We have let our guard down one too many times with regard to our constitutional responsibilities, rights, and liberties, and now elected politicians control the document. ... It took a long time for Congress and the government to amass these powers that they have taken from us, and they certainly won't relinquish them as easily as we gave them up. But with unflinching purpose, we must begin to take the Constitution back, as well as reimpose limits on congressional powers, for the sake of future Americans.
Democrats, Please Follow New York Times' Advice. Liberals' derision of "people of faith" as weak, anti-intellectual, anti-reason and anti-science is ironic beyond measure, given their stubborn adherence to their own discredited views on the thin thread of faith alone. New York Times editors' "In Search of a New Playbook" provides a perfect illustration. They not only don't apologize for President Obama's failed policies but also insist that Democrats run proudly on his record.
The Republican Party has one last chance to move to the right.
How A GOP November Victory Could Bring Its Death. If the GOP gains control of one or both Houses of Congress in the November midterm elections, and then does not make good on its promises to reverse and counter the Democrats' socialist agenda, we could hear the death knell that signals the end of the Grand Old Party.
Desperate Economic Action Ahead? Inflation is not an economic event. Short of an inept Central Bank, inflation is always a political event. It is never a solution to an economic problem. It is employed out of desperation. When economic and political problems are intractable, the political class is apt to do anything to retain power.
Why we need to let states go broke. Federal Band-Aids won't cover the fiscal problems of such states as New York, California, Michigan and Connecticut forever. State bankruptcy and fundamental restructuring of state and local finance — and labor relations — is at hand.
U.S. Is Bankrupt and We Don't Even Know. Let's get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills. What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means they can each be redesigned to achieve their legitimate purposes at much lower cost and, in the process, revitalize the economy.
1913 Was a Very Bad Year. Prior to 1913, there was no federal income tax. The states had rights and representation in Washington DC, there was no Federal Reserve Bank, and the federal government lived under the enumerated powers afforded within the US Constitution. What a difference one year can make. Almost a hundred years later, it's clear that the policies established in 1913 must be revoked in order to restore power to the people and the states. But can the American people stuff the Genie back in to the bottle?
The cornerstone of democracy rests on the foundation of an educated electorate. The world has been turned upside down: Socialism is on the rise in the U.S. and capitalism is on the rise in China. The former is a result of an uneducated electorate that fails to understand socialism's history of producing poverty; the latter is a result of pragmatic leadership able to put aside communist ideology to embrace capitalism because it produces prosperity.
The Timeless Principles of American Prosperity. Several times in the last 100 years, whenever the nation's economic policies adhered to the timeless principles of economic growth and prosperity, our economy has boomed. When it has departed from those policies, it has fallen into stagnation, or worse.
The Key to a Real Revolution. Until 1919, debate in the Senate was unlimited. There was no Senate Rule which allowed for cloture, or limiting debate. A determined Senate minority could effectively stop any congressional bill, any presidential appointment (which required Senate confirmation), and any treaty. When Democrats have had that combination of power, they have used it to radically change America. FDR had four consecutive Congresses in which Democrats could do virtually anything they wanted, because Senate Democrats could pass a cloture motion. Democrats also had filibuster-proof Senate majorities from 1963 to 1967, the years in which LBJ's Great Society program was passed.
Go For Broke Or Get Out of the Way. Considering the fact that one of the most crucial elections in the history of the country is coming up in November, it's getting hard to believe that Republicans haven't produced anything remotely resembling the 1994 "Contract With America" that drove liberals and their media lapdogs crazy — and produced Republican majorities in both houses of Congress for the first time in forty years. What's up? Politically calculated cynicism of the first order: the bet here is Republicans think they can beat something — with nothing.
The Party of Despair. [Scroll down] After reading the bios of today's liberal Democrats, it's hard to distinguish Washington, D.C. from Jurassic Park. For example, here are a few facts about some of our leading Democrat dinosaurs:
Nancy Pelosi: 70 years old, in Congress for 23 years.
Harry Reid: 71 years old, in Congress for 27 years.
Charles Rangel: 80 years old, in Congress for 39 years.
Barney Frank: 70 years old, in Congress for 28 years.
Barbara Boxer: 70 years old, in Congress for 28 years.
Steny Hoyer: 71 years old, in Congress for 29 years.
Under Obama, the business of America is government. The problem for a president and a Cabinet lacking business experience is that they don't understand what the private sector is all about. President Obama believes its purpose is to "create jobs." The folks out in nongovernment America believe the goal is to make money. If jobs are created, fine. If jobs are eliminated, so be it. It's the money that matters.
How to exploit Obama's crisis. The Obama administration came into power with the political winds at its back, the media at its feet and Americans open to major change. The White House even had a slogan: A crisis is a terrible thing to waste. The logic behind the axiom is unassailable. As Robert Higgs documented in his libertarian classic, "Crisis and Leviathan," it's crisis — not merely war — that is the health of the state. Crises melt frozen politics. They create opportunities. They give the government room to maneuver and grow. And for a while, it worked that way. Democrats steamrolled the most ambitiously liberal agenda in at least a generation. Yet liberals are miserable.
Ratcheting to Ruin. The U.S. government moves closer to a debt death spiral. ... With no spending restraints, the economy moves inexorably toward its date of collapse. The excesses and imbalances created by the explosion of debt over the last thirty years virtually ensure a depression, regardless of what policy actions the government chooses. That was determined before Obama took office. His spending only accelerated the debt spiral, never had any chance of success and sped up our date with economic destiny.
Robert Reich is Clueless. [Scroll down] People are highly concerned about the level of debt being created by the various governmental levels. Reich would have to consider the political furor to be borne from ignorance in order to come to the conclusion that more governmental debt is the only solution to our economic woes.
The Democrats' worst nightmare if the GOP takes over the House? Investigations. If the Democrats lose the House, they may very well lose not just that sword but also the shield that has prevented inquiring Congressmen from investigating the shenanigans of the Obama administration and its minions in Congress.
The October Surprise Is Coming. The 2008 Democrat October Surprise that ushered in the first hardcore radical post-American president in American history was the "economic collapse." Oh yes, that was a beaut. The time before that, the moochers and the looters tried to fake Bush documents — except that the conservative blogosphere caught them red-handed, so they missed their mark. But the party of haters, infiltrators, anti-capitalists, the party that is anti-freedom and anti-individual rights, is going to have to pull off something really catastrophic to stay in power this November.
Magical Education and the Slide into Third-Worldism. Third-worldism might be viewed as a communicable illness, a situation often witnessed when nice neighborhoods almost overnight slide into crime-infested, trash-filled slums. So how can we spot the early warning signs of creeping third-worldism? Diligence is required, and while some outcroppings are clear — e.g., crushing government debt to fund make-work public jobs — other early manifestations are less visible. Let me therefore play public health official and highlight a situation in Detroit that has all the earmarks of an "outbreak" of plague-like third-worldism.
Are Establishment Republicans Allergic To Leadership? [Scroll down] The standard operating procedure should be no mystery by now. At any given moment, public opinion is driven by media coverage. At this juncture, the standard media presentation is that Obama is a saint, who is coming to the rescue of the beleaguered coastal region. Yet the facade is crumbling. And when it does, all of Obama's antics, including the shakedown of BP, will be seen in their true light. It is appalling that Boehner and Cantor have so completely forfeited this chance to demonstrate the ugly nature of the Obama Administration.
The Character Deficit. When the framers of the United States Constitution completed their work in 1787, they acknowledged that the success and future of the republic as established by that document was dependent on the honor and integrity of its leaders and citizens. As John Adams wrote: "Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Today, the Obama administration, the majority of the members of Congress, much of the Judiciary, academia, and the media represent the culmination of the degradation of ethics and character, which has put the United States in the nearly inevitable position of joining the annals of the rise and fall of great nations.
Smiling for Dollars. [Scroll down] The assertion that God is a conservative may sound strange to some. But I'm completely serious. A conservative is simply one who believes that man is born with a propensity to do evil things and that this propensity has important implications for the way we govern. For example, the conservative believes the hedonistic tendencies of all men require a strong emphasis on family values. Children must be taught such values at an early age lest their hedonistic tendencies translate into criminal conduct. This is just one of the many ways that religion and politics intersect.
Buying the lie: 'Something for nothing'. It's time for Americans to return to the principles of thrift and industry that made us great and turn our backs on the socialism, Marxism and communism that pretend to offer easy solutions to every problem. Greed in the service of hard work is one thing; greed in the service of theft is quite another.
Does the Internet Make You Dumber? Today, the Internet grants us easy access to unprecedented amounts of information. But a growing body of scientific evidence suggests that the Net, with its constant distractions and interruptions, is also turning us into scattered and superficial thinkers. The picture emerging from the research is deeply troubling, at least to anyone who values the depth, rather than just the velocity, of human thought.
Does the Internet Make You Smarter? [Scroll down] This issue isn't whether there's lots of dumb stuff online — there is, just as there is lots of dumb stuff in bookstores. The issue is whether there are any ideas so good today that they will survive into the future.
Homo Politicus. It used to be that education simply guided the acquisition of knowledge and skills; that film, television and music diverted us from the problems of life; that our system of justice was proudly independent of politics; that churches and synagogues provided an elevation above worldly things; and that professions and their organizations concerned themselves with integrity rather than pandering to the powerful. Now politics has become the superstructure of life.
Flotillas and Falsehoods. The effort to destroy the Jewish state has many fronts. One front is in Iran, where the maniacal regime that has repeatedly promised to "wipe Israel off the map" marches inexorably toward a nuclear bomb. Another is in Gaza, from which Hamas has lobbed 10,000 missiles into Israeli cities. Yet another front, the most insidious, is comprised of the propaganda arm of the Palestinian movement. And this front thrives for only one reason — the complicity of the world press and the so-called "international community."
Knives, batons and attempted lynchings. Don't you just love 'peace activists'? Looking at the papers, I'm still trying to work out why the media seem to think the attempted lynching of Israeli military personnel is the behaviour of "peace activists"
Peaceful, Humanitarian, Civilian Flotilla Had an Arsenal. New footage shows the weapons captured from the "aid" boat Mavi Marmara, which was the scene of an attempted lynching of IDF commandos. Lots of knives, gas masks, body armor, night-vision equipment, homemade slingshots with "Hezbollah" and "Hamas" written on them (arts and crafts are a good cure for boredom on the high seas), and my personal favorite, electric chop saws, which were used to cut off sections of the ship's railings so they could be used as clubs.
'Peace convoy'? This was an Islamist terror ambush. [Scroll down] And now we can see that the real purpose of this invasion — backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH), a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas's global fund-raising machine — was to incite a violent uprising in the Middle East and across the Islamic world. ... The notion — uncritically swallowed by the lazy, ignorant and bigoted BBC and other western media — that the flotilla organisers are 'peace activists' is simply ludicrous.
Ayers, Dohrn helped organize flotilla group. Former Weather Underground leaders William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, as well as Code Pink founder Jodie Evans, helped organize the Free Gaza Movement, which launched the six-ship flotilla from Turkey to Israel that ended in a violent clash with Israeli Defense Forces, BigGovernment.com reported.
Debunking Flotilla Lies, One by One. Based on the information available three days ago, honest people of goodwill might truly have believed that Israeli soldiers perpetrated an atrocity on innocent peace activists aboard the Gaza-bound Mavi Marmara. The information that has since emerged precludes any such belief. Anyone who still believes, for instance, that these "peace activists" actually had peaceful intentions should study new video footage uploaded by the Israeli army yesterday [6/2/2010].
Rand is right! Rand Paul told MSNBC's Rachel Maddow that he thought the Civil Rights Act might have gone too far when it required private businesses to serve all comers. He said he supported the Civil Rights Act, that government had every right to require non-discrimination in public facilities, but the government should not have the power to dictate to whom private business owners must provide services. An individual who uses his own resources to invest in a risky business should have the absolute right and authority to decide to whom he will provide services.
The Euro: This Marriage Can't Be Saved. At the time of the euro's launch in January 1999, Milton Friedman declared that the euro would not survive the first major European economic recession. He believed that the member nations would pursue their own fiscal policies, which would be inconsistent with a common monetary standard. The debt crisis in Greece shows just how right he was.
Splitting America at its seams. I hate to be so pessimistic, but I truly believe that in just a few decades the United States will be the exact opposite of what its very name suggests. Rather than being united, it will be as divided as the Balkans. In decades, not centuries, we will split apart like the Soviet Union into a loose confederation of autonomous states.
The Editor says...
Bring it on! Better to have a few states survive than to have the welfare state bring down all fifty. Or 51.
Holder's Got To Go. An appearance before the House Judiciary Committee last week illustrates the problem. Holder told the panel that Justice Department decisions "are done in a political way." Thanks for the honesty, but that's not what the job requires. This may explain why Holder could question whether Arizona's new law on illegal immigrants is "unconstitutional" and imply that those who drafted the bill were racist, and, in the next breath, admit that he hadn't even read the 17-page bill.
The End of La Dolce Vita. Protected by the United States through a half-century of Cold War, Europe cut back on defense and ratcheted up spending for La Dolce Vita. All of Europe adopted universal health care. All voted in a shorter workweek, a higher minimum wage, greater job security, earlier retirements and munificent pensions. As the cradle-to-grave welfare states rose, an ever-increasing share of the labor force left the private sector for the security of the public sector.
Leadership. A well-known political commentator and author once told me there are only two types of people in political office. Those who say they have ideas to help the country and those who have ideas to help themselves. The ratio is the only thing that changes and right now we have a predominance of the latter. But who would run for political office today other than those who see great personal financial gain? More important, why would anyone put their head on the media chopping block?
Strategic Relocation. [What if] a major earthquake or other natural disaster suddenly upset the natural social order for months at a time? Could you get out of harm's way if massive social unrest erupts in the wake of a crisis? ... [What if] the "unthinkable" happens — nuclear war? Or have you thought about the potential of a major terrorist attack on a U.S. city with chemical or biological weapons? It's easy to dismiss these threats during times of peace and prosperity, but they are real.
The Communist Experience in America. [Scroll down] The more I studied communism and the CPUSA, the more conservative I became. It was fully as responsible as fascism for the most blood-soaked century in human history. Individual communists were often motivated by the highest ideals and yet they helped to create and perpetuate many of the worst horrors in human history. Writing about communists meant I also had to contend with many writers and intellectuals who apologized for or excused these atrocities — even as more and more information about them became available.
The Corrupt Party and the Stupid Party. Guess who the stupid party is? For many years I have heard this headline phrase in different incarnations and it has never been truer than it is today. The Democrats are laying down a pair of deuces and telling the Republicans that it is a royal flush. What is so silly is that Republicans fold with a full house after the Democrats play the deuces.
Constitution guarantees freedom, not a cushy life. In the years after the Revolutionary War, our Founders had specific goals when they wrote our Constitution. Chief among those was certainly "a more perfect union." It also was, however, to ensure that Americans would never again be ruled by their government.
What Made the U.S. Government So Big? If you're going to argue that the size of government is the defining debate in modern politics, you should probably explain why the government is so big. It's not because of new laws. It's because of old laws.
The Fossilization of America. [Scroll down] Bureaucrats gain control of government programs by feeding on ideals. No doubt the program I was involved in began, as most do, as an attempt to reflect the sincere ideals of the American public. However, when bureaucrats implement programs, ideals are their first victims. ... This self-preservation ethic leads to increasing organizational size and a corresponding growth in government. The larger the organization, the less likely it is that the original ideals generating programs will be attained. In fact, attaining these ideals would be counterproductive as this would result in the termination of the program. Organizational inertia is the ultimate result and the actual goal of all bureaucrats.
It's the Constitution that's Radicalizing Our Politicians. [Scroll down] Before the passage of the 17th Amendment, members of the Senate were chosen by state legislatures to be the agents of those sovereign governments in Washington, D.C., much like ambassadors today at the United Nations. While a member of the House would represent the intemperate passions of the people as citizens, a senator would represent the very different interests of the people's state governments. The interests of the two bodies were purposefully not aligned — their constituencies were different. The 17th Amendment allowed for the direct election of senators by the citizens of each state. What the U.S. had prior to 1913 was a bicameral legislature competing bill-by-bill for the direction and scope of the federal government. Now that both representatives and senators have an identical interest (pandering to the citizenry), Congress is one herd of cattle in two pens.
Diary of April 16, 2010. [Scroll down] I hear a similar outrage in the attitude of some of our left-wing friends for the tea-party movement, as when Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast writes that "they're the second coming of what Robert Kuttner called 'the revolt of the haves,'"and that they "aren't standing up for the little guy; they're standing up to the little guy." Wrong! They're standing up to the little guy's phony champion, the mega-state, which pretends to be historically inevitable and decrees that that makes it OK to take whatever it wants from them in the name of the little guy.
Call to action for a Constitutional Convention. The government is broken, I know it, you know it, and your neighbors know it, so let's do something about it. Issues such as abortion, term limits, line item veto, a balanced budget and many others flounder and go unresolved. Congress is part of the problem as evidenced with their passing of Obamacare and the Supreme Court is unreliable as it often legislates from the bench. What we need to do is go around them and that is why I am issuing a call to action for a Constitutional Convention. Although we call it a Constitutional Convention, what we really are calling for is an Article V convention which is used for proposing amendments to the Constitution.
On the other hand...
Good Advice Against a Con Con. Madison reminded us that the first Constitutional Convention "assembled under every propitious circumstance." Those propitious circumstances included having George Washington as convention chairman. Somehow, we don't see any George Washington or James Madison today, and we don't want to put our fate in the hands of men who think they can improve on the work of George Washington and James Madison.
Powerful Forces Now Calling for a Constitutional Convention. Today there is massive ignorance among the American people about the Constitution. Worse, there are powerful forces who consider that document to be antiquated and a hindrance to their vision of an all powerful government. These things, and more, make today the worst possible time in our nation's history to mess with the greatest governing document of all time.
What Have you Done? An open letter to Americans: As a Canadian, I've been observing for some time now, with great concern and even greater disbelief, the political farce enacted day after day in your country. And I keep asking, what have you done? For it seems to me, and to many others as well, that you have embarked upon a truly destructive course that may eventually bring the United States to the brink of ruination.
Out of Control. Our Founding Fathers designed a constitutional system based on the rule of law to protect the individual from an overbearing federal government. The government was to do only that which was both right and necessary; the rest was to be left up to the states and individuals. An American's freedom is based on individual, God-given rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and also on economic liberties that allow us to provision our families and pursue our own happiness.
Christophobia: Anti-Christian bigotry is the last fashionable hatred. Christianity is dying. It was once the bastion of Western civilization. Now, Christianity is a pitiful remnant of its former greatness. Across the West, it is in full retreat. ... The Anglican Church has been eviscerated, losing members as it succumbs to the liberal winds of female ordination and gay rights. Many Protestant denominations are abandoning their beliefs and fervent missionary zeal, embracing chic environmentalism and watered-down socialism as a cheap substitute for the traditional Gospel. Europe, the ancient stronghold of Christendom, has been transformed into a secular neo-pagan culture. For Europeans, God is dead; He has been replaced by materialist man.
The unelected government. Students of modern government should absorb this lesson: there are two governments in Washington. One comprised of the individuals you elect, and the other to whom they surrender most authority. Your elected officials can be found nightly on television, usually mouthing platitudes on the importance of democracy, equality and freedom, as if they were actors auditioning for an HBO miniseries on the American Revolution. The other government, the unelected tenants housed within Federal Agencies, will never ask for a vote. They don't have to.
America's Quiet Anger. There is a quiet anger boiling in America. It is the anger of millions of hard-working citizens who pay their bills, send in their income taxes, maintain their homes and repay their mortgage loans — and see their government reward those who do not. It is the anger of small town and Middle American folks who have never been to Manhattan...
Without Lies, What Could Obama Say? [Scroll down slowly] Barack Hussein Obama, if you are able to, please pay attention. We don't want a new country. We really liked the old one. Actually, the majority of us really loved the old one. What we don't love, or even like, is you. And we feel the same way about the progressive 'elites' whom you have installed in our Executive branch buildings to help you in destroying this nation that the American people cherish. And this, Mr. President, is true no matter how many veracity-challenged, teleprompted speeches that you increasingly ineffectively give.
Congress and the incredible shrinking Constitution. What is the purpose of the "permanent crisis" theory of government? First, folks in crisis are unlikely to attack the government. Second, it's a great way to liquidate enemies. Third, crises bring a lot of confusion and allow the government to focus on other strategic goals while the people are trying to survive. This is especially effective when the government is trying to shrink the middle class and reallocate assets. Of course, given the inevitable arrogance and lack of education by the typical communist tyrant, at times its hard to know which programs are willfully stupid versus accidentally so.
We've Landed in Alice's Wonderland. It appears America has become that mad land Alice stumbled upon down the rabbit hole. There is so much about American society that no longer makes any sense. ... Hundreds of billions of dollars are spent purchasing foreign oil while domestic oil fields lie fallow. In Congress, the term "cut" is not a decrease in spending but is instead only a slight reduction in an expected spending increase that is well-beyond the inflation rate. Government employees are among the most handsomely compensated in America even though the public sector is the most dysfunctional and inefficient component of our economy. The President appoints as the nation's "Safe Schools" Czar a lifelong activist advocating the sexual exploitation of children.
The Looting of America: [Scroll down] Our enemies aren't necessarily Democrats, and our salvation doesn't automatically reside with Republicans. Our enemy is corruption, and both parties have a demonstrated spectacular lust for it. That corruption is enabled by the enormous power concentrated in our oversized, unconstitutional federal government. Our only hope is fielding and electing candidates determined to drive the federal beast back into its constitutional cage. The "Roman holiday" is over. Either we turn away from our porn, drugs, and games and restore our republic, or we board the cattle cars to the gulag.
Perspectives Of A Russian Immigrant (No. 7): One seminal figure in the struggle for freedom in the USSR was Andrei Sakharov (1921-89), the leading figure in the development of the Soviet hydrogen bomb. A member of the Soviet elite, he enjoyed a better quality of life compared with most of his fellow citizens. Yet he witnessed the grotesque treatment of citizens who dared question government policies. From the early 1960s, he became a leading spokesman for human rights in the Soviet Union.
Progressives and Conservatives. When the Founders were drawing up plans for the Republic they looked at the history of past republics and concluded that democracy was the least problematic form of government but that it posed the danger of a populist tyranny. So they instituted a system of checks and balances to guard against tyrannies of the majority and to provide the public with a cooling off period in which their emotion driven agendas could be corrected by reflection. Progressives, by contrast, ... have in their heads an image of what the future should look like based on emotion (hope and change), and they discount the experience of past and present as products of ignorance, prejudice and selfish interests, which they are determined to overcome.
The Media, Extremists and Conspiracies, Part One. [Scroll down] To begin with, as we all know, political conspiracies do exist. That is why scandals happen. ... Communism was and is a conspiracy. Without commenting on every charge made by the [John Birch Society] or its leaders over the years, its central claim — that U.S. leaders are working with the communists and others to lay the groundwork for world government — cannot be dismissed out of hand. Objectively speaking, one has to admit that talk of global taxes and world government is frequently in the news and cannot be said to be the fantasies of the "black helicopter" crowd. ... Critics of the JBS have to concede the organization has been on the right track about an emerging world government.
Blacks, Youths, and CPAC: At CPAC, I saw an army of young, brilliant, and enthusiastic conservatives waiting in the wings for their opportunities to fight. I met proud, grateful black Americans who did not drink the Obama Kool-Aid and instead are eagerly pursuing their dreams.
The War on Truth: The greatest danger to our wealth, our liberties, our values, and our safety today comes from the deconstruction of truth. We live in a world driven by information. Almost all real wealth today is based upon information and knowledge. Almost all real power today is based upon mass communication, education, and entertainment. Even military power relies upon data and intelligence, not brute force.
RINO alert!
Lindsay Graham Seeks to Bail Out General Electric and Rescue Obama's Energy Policy. Graham is working with GE lobbyists to draft the "Clean Energy Act of 2009" Ñ legislation to establish a federal mandate requiring that an increasing amount of electricity must be derived from so-called "clean energy" sources over the coming decades. Specifically, the draft bill demands that 20 percent of electricity come from "clean energy" sources by 2020 and 50 percent by 2050. Coincidentally or otherwise, Graham's definition of clean energy matches GE's business strategy in clean coal technology and renewable and nuclear energy.
Obama's Clean Energy Ploy a Sucker's Game for GOP. Reports out of Washington have Senator Graham, an on-the-record supporter of the global warming myth, deep in talks with liberal Democrats John Kerry and Joe Lieberman to concoct an energy bill compromise acceptable to some Republicans and most, if not all, Democrats. The trouble with this sort of grand bipartisan compromise means that the Democrats get what they want, bigger government, but not quite as big, though with a clear opening to grow government in the coming years.
The Fourth Rail: Entitlement programs or, more specifically, reforming them before they bankrupt the nation, is considered the Third Rail of Politics. We now have, however, a Fourth Rail, just as pernicious, doing just as much damage to our national financial well-being and perhaps threatening our liberty even more than Social Security and Medicare. That Fourth Rail is the growth of the public sector work force, i.e. employees of federal, state, and local governments, and the massive money- and power-hungry unions which represent them.
Newly-Elected Virginia AG Ken Cuccinelli: Activist! During his campaign for Attorney General of Virginia, Ken Cuccinelli committed himself to acting with an aggressive conservative agenda. He promised voters that he would the office to aggressively fight governmental overregulation and interference wherever he could find it. ... Keep an eye on this guy. He means business.
When Did the Concept of Celebrity Jump the Shark? Somewhere over the last 25 years, the idea of what constitutes a "celebrity" changed from a person with some kind of history of achievement to pretty much anyone with a pulse who manages to get his, her or its mug splashed across a TV screen. Actually, as the wailing and gnashing of teeth surrounding the death of Michael Jackson demonstrated last year, the pulse is now optional.
Colin Powell's Endorsement of Barack Obama Will Live... in Infamy. For more than a year after Barack Obama became president, there was no word from Colin Powell about a man he described as having "great insight into the challenges we're facing of a military and political and economic nature." Today, Powell broke his silence. Did he have the courage to admit his mistake, his blunder, his betrayal? No.
Sen. DeMint: 'America Is Teetering Towards Tyranny'. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) told a standing-room-only crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Thursday [2/18/2010] that Democrats in Congress and the White House are the inspiration for a revolution that he and fellow conservatives hope is sweeping the nation ahead of the 2010 mid-term elections.
Why Did Rome Fall — And Why Does It Matter Now? [Scroll down] What made American culture boom through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were traditional American values like the Protestant work ethic, family thrift, limited and stable government, equality of opportunity rather than result, lower taxes, personal freedom, opportunity for advancement and profit, and faith in American exceptionalism. But the cloning and spreading of this system after WWII ("globalization") did two things...
Book review:
Intellectuals and Society. An auto mechanic who can't fix transmissions is bound to go out of business, just as a civil engineer who designs a bridge that collapses is apt to suffer some problems with his career. Not so with intellectuals. "Not only have intellectuals been insulated from material consequences, they have often enjoyed immunity from even a loss of reputation after having been demonstrably wrong."
Just Say No to Democracy. Actually, "democracy" is not only messy but also immoral and unworkable. The Founding Fathers saw that coming, as well. So we don't live under a system of simple majority rule for a reason, as most readers already know. The minority political party, luckily, has the ability to obstruct, nag, and filibuster the majority's agenda. Otherwise, those in absolute power would run wild — or, in other words, you all would be living that Super Bowl Audi commercial by now.
Give Me Back My Party. At one time, the GOP was the party that fought for open government, term limits, reductions in spending and less government intrusion. When I was involved in the Republican Party, we wanted the IRS disbanded and the Department of Education either reduced, made useful, or abolished. We believed in the goodness of an individual and the greatness of individualism.
Ending Corruption in Washington. [Scroll down slowly] The only way to get rid of such corruption is to deprive Congress of its vast regulatory powers. There is truly no reason why politicians should superintend any portion of the private sphere. Finance, health care, energy, housing, farming, and all the rest should be left wholly to the market, since the market invariably delivers goods and services in the most economical and cost-efficient manner. Every time politicians decide to regulate, they only make matters worse.
Haiti Needs to Be Built, Not Rebuilt. Haiti is by far the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. Some 98% of the country is deforested. It lacks many of the fundamental institutions necessary for a vibrant economy, such as a reliable police force, protections for private property, and schools that boost literacy rates. Just 50% of Haiti's population is literate now. Haiti also lacks a culture that encourages a strong work ethic, the accumulation of capital, and the passing of assets on to future generations. Realistically, building an economic base for Haiti will take generations.
The riddle of Chuck puppet Gillibrand. What to do about Kirsten Gillibrand? The in-over-her-head upstate legislator (read: hot hick), whom Gov. Paterson foolishly catapulted into the Senate, cannot be kicked. She might cry. And she can't be reasoned with. Her skull might explode. To say Gillibrand has failed in the year she's spent warming New York's unofficial "woman's seat," a perch formerly occupied by the cravenly ambitious Hillary Rodham Clinton, is too kind.
The Causes of Unemployment. Since 2000, the U.S. manufacturing sector has lost nearly 25 percent of our total manufacturing workforce. Many of those jobs have gone to Communist China, where toys for the U.S. market are made in sweatshops by workers paid as little as 36 cents per hour, and many white-collar jobs have gone to India, where telephone operators can be hired for $1 an hour. Leading economists are becoming willing to admit that their devotion to free trade was misplaced.
Another Entitlement That's Unsustainable. Inside the House and Senate health care bills lurks a ticking time bomb — a new federal entitlement, under the Community Living Assistance Services and Supports (CLASS) Act, which would allow Americans to buy into a voluntary federal long-term care insurance program. The main problem, as Josh Gordon, policy director for the fiscal-watchdog group the Concord Coalition, noted is that CLASS, which has passed "below the radar" of most Americans, is a poorly designed "gimmick."
Hurry up and slow down. Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) being chided for insisting on the reading of a healthcare reform amendment on the Senate floor is interesting. Reading legislation is something I'd like to hear a bit more of by our elected officials — certainly not on every proposal, but on the big ones. Perhaps if they did this on a relatively regular basis, we could stop lamenting it as a "stunt" or "delay tactic" and begin instead to insist on it.
Obama's vote-buying dilemma. The Obama Administration reportedly entered office with an FDR model in mind. One of FDR's successes was spending money in places where voters could be converted. While this strategy did not end the Depression, it was political genius in the sense that it ensured dominance for the Democrat Party in national elections for several decades.
Obama's War of Words. "Nobody remembers "Tear Down this Wall" because I did an OK job of stringing the words together," says my speechwriter friend, Peter Robinson. "We remember the speech because Reagan meant it, because it expressed the principles that he acted on, and because history proved him right."
Spare Us Another "Stimulus". Businesses must spend money to make money. It's expensive to invent, test and develop new products, and it can take years before they pay off. Government doesn't work that way. Washington, D.C. spends money to hire people to enforce laws and regulations. Years, even decades later, those federal employees will still be toiling away on Uncle Sam's dime (that is, yours and mine as taxpayers), even if the problem they were hired to address has ceased to exist.
ObamaJobs: Uncle Sam's Hiring Hall. Every serious person should welcome the president's proposals to lift the dormant economy and reduce unemployment. Not because every serious person would agree with them but because they are a clear test of how a left-wing government would run the American economy. If this works, hats off to them and we become France. If not, Americans may finally dump left-wing economics into the ash heap of history, starting next November and then in the next presidential election, which can't come soon enough.
Orwellian Nightmare: Science Is Whatever 'the Party' Says It Is. The Party — the political class of the world — does not want God to exist. Therefore, if the laws of physics and the laws of mathematics say He does, then the laws of physics and the laws of mathematics must be changed to whatever the Party wants. Therefore, God does not exist. He must not be mentioned, must not be prayed to in class. The Party wants the Earth to be warming, so that its members can establish their power over every aspect of our lives. The Earth has not warmed in a decade, in fact it has gotten colder. But the Party says warmer, and further, says that the warming is due to human addition of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Community Organizing in Afghanistan. The problem is that both the Bush and Obama administrations have sought national Afghani solutions in a country that has had little or no national cohesion. Tribal communities are fiercely independent because they have always had to be to survive. With no historically reliable centralized government, true national unity is little more that a pipedream mired by corruption and an overwhelming lack of trust.
Thanksgiving links between the internet and freedom. This Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the Internet and the opportunity it affords for free expression. Granted, filth is just a click away, but the opportunity to exercise free will in ways that bring harm has been present since the Garden of Eden. Time will tell whether the Internet's positive contributions will outweigh its negative ones, but I'm betting that it will.
Giving Thanks For The Internet. Tis the season to be thankful, and this year one thing stands out as something to be particularly grateful for... the Internet. Thanks to the Internet, and the Army of Davids it has empowered, the mainstream media no longer possess a strangle hold on information. They no longer get to decide what we know about the people and organizations that effect [sic] our daily lives.
The Libertarians' Chance to Matter. While Theodore Roosevelt, Strom Thurmond, George Wallace, and Ross Perot generated considerable heat, they were populist flares who soon burned out. Every four years the Libertarian Party picks a presidential candidate who tallies meager vote totals. In 2008, former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr received 523,686 votes — 0.4% of the national total.
Change We Can Believe In. The idea that we could ever cut outright the budget seems long ago impossible — given the culture of complaint and the melodramatic rants about starvation and murder if another entitlement is not granted. Still, some sort of leadership is required to remind the American people that much of what their government does is not just unnecessary, but counter-productive and they would be better off without it.
Americans Deserve a Transparent Fed. For nearly a century the Federal Reserve has operated in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of Congress, journalists and the American people. Created in 1913, the Fed was given enormous responsibility to protect the value of our currency. Yet in the last 96 years the U.S. dollar has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power.
The Great Mystery. The country can return to the path of economic and social prosperity and relegate the Left to the background of the nation's politics, where they belong, once and for all. The key is time, and time is something we have little of. The 2010 elections will be the most important midterm election in our history.
Reminding Caesar of God's Existence. I hope that President Obama will understand that the signatories to the Manhattan Declaration are determined to defend the sanctity of human life, the dignity of marriage, and respect for religious freedom. On these issues, they cannot compromise, and they will not remain silent.
They're ALL Communists. Back when people were tippy-toeing around the "s" word ("socialist"), and before he was elected, I called out Obama's basic political inclinations for what they are — communist. Though plenty pooh-poohed this, and called it extreme or unsubstantiated, there was ample proof in Obama's own writings, his interviews, and the political leanings of his mentors (Saul Alinsky, Frank Marshall Davis), his pastor (Jeremiah Wright) and his friends. It's absurd to hear people say now that Obama is governing differently than he campaigned. If you think that, you weren't listening. But those who still harbor any doubts need only look at his team of "advisors."
Obama and the Cult of Youth. [Scroll down slowly] The Roman state degenerated from liberty to tyranny as it came to value youth over age and wisdom. I think about all of this often when I hear of the "youth vote," so prized and pursued in contemporary American politics. ... Last November ... the "youth vote" turned out in record numbers for Barack Obama. ... These young people will not know the ruin they have brought until they are older and wiser and it is too late.
A Generation of Sociopaths. Glenn Beck gets it. ... He understands that the downfall of America will not come from the outside. It will come from the inside. It will happen because we failed to pass on to our children the values that made our nation great — and to remind them to pass those values on to their children.
A Tale of Two Community Organizers. Jim Jones could round up crowds of protesters and door to door campaign workers on demand. Admired and enabled by San Francisco Democrats and media moguls, Jones gathered emotionally and economically needy people around him, pretending to be a minister to their needs. He forced them to drain their bank accounts, sign over their homes and their welfare and social security checks. Jones gave their money generously to the Democrat liberal elite and stashed millions in illegal overseas accounts. When Democrats needed a crowd of thousands, Jones provided his willing flock.
Saving America: "What Can I Do?" How do we fight out-of-control spending, Green Fascists, and the Nagging Nazi Nanny State? ... How do we stop the destruction of America's middle class, the devaluation of the U.S. dollar, the insane government spending, and the ceding of America's sovereignty to a Global Elite via the U.N.? How do we stop the indoctrination of our children, and the "dumbing down" of America? How do we get God back into our government, culture, and lives?
Why the Federal Government Should Get Out of Education. Most Americans want less government, smaller government and lower taxes. The only way to accomplish this is by abolishing federal departments and bureaucracies. As far back as the Reagan administration, Republicans promised to abolish the Department of Education. They couldn't do it then because they lacked a majority in Congress. But whatever happened to the plan to abolish the Department of Education when Republicans became the majority?
Freedom is Hard Work. The Founders were endlessly concerned about giving ordinary Americans an unprecedented measure of liberty as offered by the Constitution they were drafting. They wondered if regular folk could muster the sophistication necessary to make rational, intelligent decisions at the polls... Fast forward to 2009 and it's easy to see why the Founders were so worried. In spite of various streams of round-the-clock news and data, most of our electorate is misinformed, blissfully ignorant or simply apathetic with respect to the means by which they are governed.
Why I Became A Conservative. In early 1992, I heard five words that were to drastically alter the course of my life. H. Ross Perot was on TV. He held up a toilet seat and said "The government paid $700.00 for this toilet seat." He then stated, "And this is public knowledge." Huh? Perot then went on to outline more fascinating nuggets of information for which I had absolutely no knowledge. He pulled out charts and graphs and proceeded to inform me of a world of facts to which I had never been exposed.
The Only Way to Beat Obamanism: Elect More Republicans. For those Americans who want to fight back against the menacing expansion of government and the insanely irresponsible spending of the Obama administration, there is only one way to succeed: electing more Republicans to high office. If the public fails to elect GOP candidates for the Senate, the House, governorships, state legislatures and, ultimately, the presidency there is simply no way to derail the leftist agenda that menaces liberty and prosperity.
Horsepower Sure Beats Horses! In New York City alone at the turn of the century, horses deposited on the streets every day an estimated 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine, accounting for about two-thirds of the filth that littered the city's streets. Excreta from horses in the form of dried dust irritated nasal passages and lungs, then became a syrupy mass to wade through and track into the home whenever it rained.
Michelle Obama is not immune to criticism because she does stuff like this:
Michelle Obama turns Breast Cancer Awareness Month into attack on insurance companies. First Lady Michelle Obama took part in a White House event this afternoon [10/23/2009] to mark National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. While such events have been mostly noncontroversial in the past, Mrs. Obama used the occasion to launch an extended attack on the insurance industry, the Obama administration's current target in the ongoing battle over national health care legislation.
We Need a Bigger House. Except for a brief effort to accommodate Alaska and Hawaii, the size of the House has been frozen at 435 members since 1911. A 1929 law, driven in part by a desire to keep immigrants underrepresented, has kept it that way. But there's nothing sacred about the 435 number. In fact, the Founders would be aghast at the idea that the "peoples' house" is filled with pols speaking for hundreds of thousands of citizens.
More Government Does Not Equal 'Reform'. The president and his followers may disseminate the buzz phrase that "the status quo is unsustainable," but the only thing life has taught us is that it is government programs that are unsustainable.
Honest Citizens Put in the Dock as Thugs Go Free. Britain continues its descent into a socialist hell, devoid of any justice or morality. We now live in a sub-Marxist world where the ultra-politicised institutions of the State wield arbitrary power, bullying the decent members of the public while dangerous criminals walk free.
Medical Care is a Successful and Growing Industry, not a Liability. There is still an industry that is growing and successful, that produces 17% of the Gross Domestic Product, and that employs over 10% of all American workers. The medical industry incorporates more than 820,000 businesses ... Suddenly, it seems that brisk industrial growth, creation of new technologies, expansion of employment, healing of once-fatal illnesses, prolongation of life, and prevention of pain are not even success, but a just terrible fiscal burden that our overlords deeply resent.
This Will Never Be A Euro-Socialist Country. The Obama Administration, the Democrats in Congress and the media are shocked and surprised by the depth of reaction to the proposed overhaul of the health care system and the tax and spend policies of this government. They had assumed that since the President had garnered over 69 million votes in the past election (53% of the votes cast), the American people had given him and his party a free hand to transform the country. Never mind that the votes Mr. Obama received only accounted for 30% of the voting age population in the country and that many voted for him thinking he was the moderate he proclaimed to be during his campaign for President.
Utopia Versus Freedom: The big question is whether we are prepared to follow any politician who claims to be able to "solve" our "problem." If we are, then there will be a never ending series of "solutions," each causing new problems calling for still more "solutions." That way lies a never-ending quest, costing ever increasing amounts of the taxpayers' money and — more important — ever greater losses of your freedom to live your own life as you see fit, rather than as presumptuous elites dictate.
Tell The Government: 'Out Of Our Light'. President Obama and his supplicants in Congress are offering the citizens of the United States, if not anything, then quite a lot. They are offering "affordable" health-care for all. They are offering a world without "climate change." All that they require in return for living in such an Eden? A little liberty, is all. The ghastly cap-and-trade legislation will tell you when and how much energy you can use to pursue your dreams; it will tax almost all productive human activity. The Obama-Pelosi health-care racket will slowly starve the private insurance market, leaving you with exactly one choice for your medical care — the government.
The Capitalist Manifesto. From the current economic crisis through third-world poverty to global warming, capitalism has been blamed for nearly every major problem of our day. Accused of fostering discrimination, exploitation, environmental destruction and a host of other ills, it looms as a popular villain in the contemporary western psyche. But this viewpoint could hardly be more unfair, argues Robert Murphy in The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism.
Congratulations, President Ahmadinejad. The American administration is now wholly complicit in the brutal travesty that was June 12 in Iran. ... American exceptionalism, that concept Obama doesn't grasp, is founded upon the belief that all people have the right to freedom. It is a conviction consecrated in our founding documents and one that's been defended with American lives. When we authenticate the rule of freedom's enemies, we become the hollow jingoists they say we are.
Texas proves limited government works. After regular, 140-day legislative sessions every two years, Texas lawmakers go home to live under the laws they pass. Limited time at the Capitol not only requires state leaders to focus on the essentials, it also reduces the mischief unrestrained government can do. Limiting state government in Texas has led to balanced budgets, low taxes, a predictable regulatory climate and a fair legal system.
Obama-Care, Euthanasia, and The Boiled Frog Syndrome. A bloodless fascist coup has been successfully staged against the United States of America. It is our duty, our right, and our privilege, to stand up and deny our wanna-be Fascist overlords, the successful implementation of their plans for us. We must act, and we must act now. The time for being "asleep at the wheel" is over. We simply must get involved, or our precious freedoms are forfeit.
Avoiding the Next Obama. The move towards the Euro-style imperialist socialism that has taken over this country has been a long time coming. For decades, oblivious youth have been indoctrinated at American universities to sympathize with far-left values; the entertainment industry is filled with leftist blowhards who wear the mask of intellect; liberals of all stripes have become unselfconscious in mocking (Christian) religious customs, and the juggernaut that is the left-stream media has been sealing the deal for years, helping to make this Republic increasingly vulnerable to demagoguery and despotism.
Obama's best and brightest. There's a lesson here, and Barack Obama should heed it. The lesson was neatly summed up in a 1972 book, David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest," which told how President John F. Kennedy recruited some of the nation's top minds for his administration, people who then got us involved in a war in Vietnam we ended up losing at horrific cost.
'Fight them over there vs. over here' a false choice. Unfortunately, our foreign policy is undermining our security. We have more than 700 military installations in 135 countries around the globe. We have 50,000 troops in Germany, 30,000 in Japan, and 25,000 in South Korea. Worse, we have our brave men and women bogged down occupying Iraq and Afghanistan in the midst of ethnic strife and civil war. We spend more than $1 trillion per year on our foreign policy, and our military is stretched thin. We can no longer afford to be the world's policeman. We must bring our troops home from around the world, cut overseas spending and strengthen our national defense.
Behind Hugo's Harassment Of Honduras. The recent actions of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez say a lot about what's really at stake in the Honduras debacle. It's not about democracy or constitutionality. It's about preserving a tyrant's empire.
Let's Hear It for the Rainbow Tour. [Scroll down] So when my agent got a call from a major studio the other day, asking whether I was available to tackle an updated version of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita, you can bet I jumped at the chance. ... Act One. "Barry," a mysterious Community Organizer with multiple names and an indistinct past, suddenly appears in Chicago. His consummate mastery of the brown-nosing techniques he learned at Harvard (where the "Obamamometer" was invented to measure the audacity of taupe) quickly wins him the patronage of American patriots/guys in the neighborhood like William Ayers and his lovely wife, Bernardine Dohrn.
Obamanomics Supporters — Cracks in the Dike. President Obama and the Democratic Party's congressional supermajority represent nothing less than a grave and gathering threat to that which made America great — free enterprise, competition, allowing people to keep as much of their own money as possible, and the assumption that people know better how and on what to spend their money than does government. The Republicans — who, remember, supported the first bailout, under Bush — are only slightly better. The first President Bush signed into law the Americans With Disabilities Act, telling private employers under what circumstances they should hire and "accommodate" those with "special challenges." Republican Richard Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency. The second Bush signed the prescription benefits bill for seniors. And on and on it goes.
Zelaya's Removal: Necessary and Proper. Yesterday [7/7/2009], Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met privately with former president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya. Afterward, she announced that the crisis in that nation would now be mediated by Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, saying, "We hope at the end of this mediation there will be a return of democratic constitutional order that is agreed to by all concerned." It's time to take off the gloves: Mrs. Clinton is lying. "[D]emocratic constitutional order" has in fact already been returned to Honduras, no thanks to her boss, Barack Obama. And then only because Manuel Zelaya was impeached and removed from office by the Honduran Congress, and his attempt at rewriting the nation's Constitution halted by the Supreme Court.
62 Million Voiceless Americans. Is it still called debate when only one side controls the conversation? That's the question the 62 million Americans who didn't vote for Obama are asking themselves. ... Why hold a conversation? The left is in control and there is no need to consult with the people they were elected to govern. The politicians and the experts know best.
How long till Obama is booted? I'm wondering how long it will be before the word "impeachment" starts being bantered about? The list of reasons to expel Obama keeps getting longer and stronger, and this is only five months into his reign.
The Editor says...
I've been wondering how soon the I-word would came into play. It is entirely possible that Obama will be impeached, but only after the 2010 election rectifies the imbalance of power, of course.
Joint Strike Fighter Doesn't Need an Alternate Engine. The Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps need Lockheed's F-35 joint strike fighters now, and in large numbers. What they don't need is an alternate engine for them. President Barack Obama singled out the alternate engine for the F-35 as an example of wasteful spending last month, but advocates are pushing their supporters to continue the funding.
Celebrating the End of American Independence. Even those who see what is happening live in a state of illusion, hoping against hope that it is all just a mirage. They believe that America will simply rebound, as it always has. But they overlook the reality that all of the founding principles and values that made it possible for our country to prosper and even dig itself out of tough times, have been systematically destroyed. The mechanisms needed to rebound, no longer exist...
Brother, Can You Spare a Decade? Not surprisingly, everyone from Wall Street to the halls of Congress is worried that the current recession will turn into the dreaded D, and has seized on desperate rescue measures. But was the Great Depression all bad? Did anything good come out of the 1930s? I started doing some research and was amazed to find a bright side to the gloomy '30s — a lower cost of living, great new inventions and other technological advances, new forms of entertainment, more sports and reading, and a return to sober social behavior.
The Slow Quicksand Of Corruption. Commencement speakers and their speechwriters strain during graduation season to find new ways to deliver the same message: Follow your passion, volunteer, seek joy in small things and recognize that fortune is an illusion. ... [But] No one will caution ambitious young men to stay out of politics. They should.
Keep Libel Laws out of Science. It has been a stressful and frustrating twelve months since I published my article on chiropractors and their attempts to treat children with conditions such as asthma. The British Chiropractic Association's decision to sue me for libel has been an enormous drain on my time and energy. ... [But] everyone agrees that there is something fundamentally wrong with the English libel laws, which have a chilling effect on journalists, whether they write about science or anything else, whether they live in Britain or anywhere else.
The Incredible Shrinking Clintons. [Scroll down] Both Clintons are effectively muzzled and cannot criticize Obama even as he reverses President Clinton's free market proclivities and budget balancing discipline. Hillary, the supposed friend of Israel, must sit by quietly and watch Iran get the bomb while trying all the while to stop Israel from preventing it.
Obama continues Bush's 2nd term — badly. Conservative foreign and national-security policies do not need remaking, rebranding or remessaging. They need not be escorted by prefixes or adjectives, nor do they need "moderating." Conservative foreign policy is unabashedly pro-American, unashamed of American exceptionalism, unwilling to bend its knee to international organizations, and unapologetic about the need for the fullest range of dominant military capabilities.
Where Else are the Castro Spies? Last week, the FBI arrested a well-born State Department intelligence analyst and his wife for conspiracy to commit espionage for the Castro regime. ... "Tip of the iceberg" is an oft-used phrase by Cuba-watchers whenever a Castro spy gets nabbed. In light of the motivations uncovered in Myers diary and the rampant Castrophilia among Beltway academic, media and Democratic circles, who can doubt it?
How Newt Gingrich Sabotaged The "Gingrich Revolution": [Scroll down] Reagan was no posturing follower. His "Big Tent" did not result from any pathetic attempts to pander his way into the hearts of the American people. Rather, he unabashedly offered starkly defined conservatism as the best course for the nation, and in so doing convinced many in the "middle" to dispense with their own petty differences, and join him as he sought to better the country. ... Reagan had no place in his plan for the double-minded treachery exhibited by Colin Powell, and was unafraid to alienate such people.
How America Lost Its Freedom. [Scroll down] The cycle of corruption must be broken and Americans must identify and attack the greatest offenders first. If they fail to go after the kingpins of government corruption, they will waste a lot of time and resources chasing their tails in pursuit of mere pawns, or even worse, the wrong guys. The cycle is simple, but not easy to break... Money is used to buy politicians who then — once in power — return taxpayer funds to those who got them elected.
White House and DOJ Silent on Shooting of Soldiers. Why haven't the President and Attorney General of the United States been as quick to condemn the murder of one U.S. soldier and the wounding of another as they were in condemning the murder of an abortionist?
The Religious Right Didn't Kill George Tiller. The organized antiabortion movement has always opposed violence against abortion providers. That has never stopped opportunistic prochoice activists, however, from conflating their passionate rhetoric with the behavior of individual criminals. True to form, on Sunday [5/31/2009], Mike Hendricks of the Kansas City Star accused anyone who had criticized Tiller as a murderer (Tiller aborted healthy, nine-month old fetuses) of being an "accomplice" to his death.
Here's a Story Idea that Will Be Ignored: Two Shootings. Shortly after the murder of George Tiller, pro-life groups put out statements denouncing the crime. These statements came from all over the pro-life camp. Some were more forthright than others, it it true, but most were admirable in their categorical rejection of vigilante killings. This morning, a U.S. Army recruiting station was attacked. One recruiter was killed, another hurt. Any statements from the antiwar Left deploring that violence?
Conservatives Aren't the Extremists. Conservatives are not the ones who sermonize about tolerance yet demonstrate intolerance toward conservative and Christian thought; support exterminating babies in the womb; apologize the world over for America; or gut the military and missile defense because of some dangerously egotistical notion that they have the magic to turn evil into goodness with their charisma and eloquence or, even worse, because they refuse to recognize evil in the world, except as emanating from the United States.
Dick Cheney: brutal, uncompromising, brilliant. The former vice president, who this time has been sent from the past to save the future rather than the other way round, has had an astonishing week. He's dominated much of the news with his barnstorming defence of the previous administration's counter-terrorism strategy, and completely overshadowed President Obama's weak-kneed and exceedingly dull speech at the National Archives.
Barack Obama's biggest critic: Charles Krauthammer. The dinner guest that night at George Will's house in Chevy Chase was intellectually nimble, personally formidable and completely baffling, recalled columnist Charles Krauthammer — who was getting his first up-close look at President-elect Barack Obama. "We sat around and said, 'Does anybody really know who he is and what he wants to do, now that we've had this?'" Krauthammer recalled of Obama's January sit-down with conservative columnists. "And the answer was no. We don't know."
Political correctness is torture. On college campuses, in newsrooms and now in the highest corridors of power, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, the politically correct left is wielding its weaponry with the confidence that it can take down any group, anyone or anything. The thought police are now officially in charge. The real hate crime these days is the Orwellian intimidation wielded by the left against those that don't think the way they do. It's worse than waterboarding.
Obama's Plans May Be Doomed by Unchecked Spending. Dealing with the cosmetic stuff — curbing congressional pet projects or eliminating fraud and abuse in executive agencies — is fine, if insignificant. Obama needs to deliver on big-ticket luxuries like farm subsidies, tax breaks and a down payment on entitlement reform. There's little reason to think congressional Democrats or Republicans are serious about such sacrifices. This isn't so much about ideology or partisanship; it's about entrenched interests and habits.
It was not torture, but it saved lives. CIA agents once played rough with possibly 30 terrorists, and maybe they shouldn't have, but they saved American lives that way. And if you say no, no, a thousand times no to playing rough in the future, you may be saying yes to thousands of deaths.
The Apology Obama Should Have Given. America is a country founded on the principle that man has inalienable rights. At certain times in our history, we have not exemplified those principles, but the best part of America and her people is that stand as a beacon to the world that man can live in peace, and people, through their own efforts can improve their lot in life. For that, America will never apologize.
Socialism is really cannibalism. When I work, I use up hours of my life... my limited, mortal, human, physical life. The money I am paid represents the life I expended to earn it. My pay — my wealth — is my labor. It is the expenditure of some of my body's short, precious life on earth. So when someone takes my money, they steal my hours of labor. They consume not only the fruits of my labor, but my labor itself, that labor which is the very expenditure of my life. When someone loots and consumes the money I have earned, they consume the part of my life devoted to producing what hey have taken.
Senator John Cornyn — How Wrong Does He Get? As many of you know, I at one time supported John Cornyn. Not any longer. ... Today [5/29/2009], Senator Cornyn said: "I think it's terrible." What does he think is so terrible? I am glad you asked. Here it is. "A top Senate Republican is taking aim at recent statements from conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gingrich suggesting Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor is a 'racist.'[...]" I suppose it would be a good idea, then, that whenever Sen Cornyn says the sky is blue we had all better go look for ourselves to be sure. I suppose calling a shovel a shovel just might be offensive to the shovel.
Give Navy Seals Credit on Somali Pirate Rescue, Not Obama. I think we are all grateful that Capt. Richard Phillips of the Maersk Line has been rescued after being held for five days by a group of pirates in a lifeboat off the coast of Africa. But I think the praise being heaped on President Obama for his handling of the situation is approaching excessive.
On the other hand...
How to Solve the Pirate Problem. President Obama didn't personally order the Navy SEALs to take out the Somali pirates holding Capt. Richard Phillips hostage. He left the decision up to the commanders on the scene, who made the right call. Obama should be congratulated for that, just as surely as he would have been criticized if things had gone south. For those of us who see the resurrection of Jimmy Carter in Barack Obama, this was a nice surprise.
Our Problem is Immorality. Most of our nation's great problems, including our economic problems, have as their root decaying moral values. Whether we have the stomach to own up to it or not, we have become an immoral people left with little more than the pretense of morality.
World's most dangerous city? In a world growing more dangerous by the week in this dark spring of 2009, Washington may be the most dangerous city in the world. The city is safe enough for its residents — it is the rest of the country and world that is endangered by what Washington is capable of doing.
Seventy Years After Appeasement. Seventy years ago, Hitler made it very plain that he was going to transform Europe and that only those who resisted him with force could stop his plans. Today, while Iran moves closer to acquiring the means to plunge our world into a new dark age, while menacing nations like China and Russia nip at our drooping power, while Hugo Chavez schemes to turn Venezuela into a grim prison like Cuba, we can act. We seem to lack the stomach to do anything, though we have the means.
Why be a conservative? Why would I choose to be a conservative? Why would I choose the persecution? I am constantly ridiculed for my beliefs. I have been compared to Nazis. Liberals call me a sexist, racist, bigoted homophobe. My intentions are mischaracterized, and then I am judged by those mischaracterized intentions. For example, because I favor policies to help get everyone off of welfare to succeed on their own, my intentions are characterized as trying to keep blacks and minorities poor. These liberals then brand me a racist because they perceive my intentions are to keep blacks poor.
How I'm Praying for the President. Reasonable men are now beginning to question whether or not Barack Obama is intentionally acting to harm the interests of the American people. Can God's people stand idle and allow their elected leader to undermine righteousness? To do so is to be complicit in the unrighteous deeds of our elected leader. We have an obligation to hold him to account, and Barack Obama is ultimately accountable to the Judge of all the earth.
Michigan: Blueprint to crisis. Come to Michigan, America, to see where some of this could lead if a) it's not accompanied by plain recognition that business is the most effective creator of jobs and b) the boss slow-walks remedies to serious problems, as Obama is doing on the banking crisis. Here, we have the nation's highest unemployment rate, a dubious distinction that shows no sign of abating. We have an economic icon whose leaders need federal assistance because their industry is on the verge of collapse.
What the government worker unions know. What does the demand for public sector unions tell us? The purpose of a union is to interpose itself between the employer and the employee to the benefit of the employee. The existence of public sector unions tells us that the people most intimately familiar with government, those who experience it every moment of every work day, don't trust it! And yet the basis of liberalism in general and Obamanomics in particular is that we should turn over to government some of our most important, intimate and consequential activities, such as retirement, education and health care.
Love That Hate! [Scroll down] I'm tired of the populist nonsense from talk-radio on how Americans "deserve better than this." They do? Why? They voted for this. Obama is being Obama. Pelosi is being Pelosi. Schumer is being Schumer. The American people cast the ballots. You reap what you sow.
Economic Miracle. The average well-stocked supermarket carries over 60,000 different items. Because those items are so routinely available to us, the fact that it is a near miracle goes unnoticed and unappreciated. ... But what is the driving force that explains how millions of people manage to cooperate to get 60,000 different items to your supermarket? Most of them don't give a hoot about you and me, some of them might hate Americans, but they serve us well and they do so voluntarily. ... By the way, how many of you would be in favor of Congress running our supermarkets?
A Stock Market Thing. "Black Monday," October 19, 1987, was the biggest one-day drop in U.S. stock market history. Pressed for fast and decisive federal action, President Reagan responded: "This is purely a stock market thing." ... In response to Reagan's widely ridiculed "silence and inaction", the Dow Jones Industrial Average steadily increased. One year later, the Dow was approaching its pre-crash level. Five years later, it was up 40 percent. Ten years later, it was up 250 percent. Twenty years later, it was up 500 percent.
Capitalism is the Best Company You Ever Worked For. According to the Small Business Administration (SBA), 99.7% of all employers have less than 500 employees. They hire 58 million people, half the private sector work force, and pay 45 percent of the private payroll. If the U.S. were a business, these would be your average employees. But when it comes to performance many are anything but average. The SBA documents that they have generated about 2/3 of the new jobs in this country. They employ 40% of all high tech workers. Compared to large companies, they produce 13 times more patents per employee.
One of Us. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal — selected to deliver the Republicans' Fat Tuesday response to President Obama — might also be voted the man least likely to let the good times role. (sic) Slight, earnest, deeply religious and supremely wonkish, Jindal resembles neither his flamboyant predecessors as governor, nor his reveling, 30-something contemporaries on Bourbon Street.
Executive Temperament in Evidence: Bobby Jindal. [Louisiana Governor Bobby] Jindal is a remarkable young man. Born in 1971 to parents who migrated to Baton Rouge from India, he entered the freshman class at Brown University when he was twenty, was admitted to Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School when he was twenty-three, and that same year was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to study at New College, Oxford — where he took an M. Litt. in political science and wrote a dissertation entitled "A Needs-Based Approach to Health Policy."
Letter Of Resignation To The RNC; I Quit! After wrestling with this decision for two years now, I have resigned from the Republican party. The party no longer represents my values and I see no hope for real change in the foreseeable future.
The GOP wants people to thrive, not socialism. [Rush Limbaugh] gave a speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington that many liberals protested was filled with hate and attacks on our dear president. Not that they listened to it. Had they been part of the more than 3.2 million people who watched it via cable television, they might have better understood what he said.
There'll Be No Debate. I'm just wildly speculating, of course, but I suspect that Mr. Obama would not be too keen on having to answer the following questions, among many others: How could you sign a bill to spend more than a trillion dollars this nation does not have, purportedly to stimulate the economy, and then immediately convene a fiscal responsibility summit? Why did you promise to end earmarks and then preside over a bill in your first month in office that includes some 8,500 earmarks? ... Seeing as the bill is not stimulative as advertised, why did you cram it through so fast that even those voting on it couldn't cursorily read through it? On what possible basis can you justify any federal money to street organizing groups, such as ACORN?
It's Time for American Freedom Fighters to Unite. For almost eighty years now, Washington DC has wasted the labors of the people under the false pretense of taking care of them. Over the last seventy years, America has gone from the most peaceful prosperous free nation on earth to an increasingly violent bankrupt example of world class political corruption. In the next two years, irreversible damage will be done. The people responsible for bringing the greatest nation on earth to the brink of third world status now control the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of the federal government and they are using their unbridled power to ram pure global secular socialism down the throat of every American.
Our Keystone Cops Foreign Policy. It appears that Barack Obama's foreign policy team is going to make us pine for the days of the Bush Administration's competency by comparison very soon. I'm not sure what exactly this story illustrates except there doesn't seem to be anyone home at the White House yet. You may recall the hubbub over Senator Kerry being handed a letter that was from Hamas which he promptly turned over to the American consulate at his next stop which happened to be Jerusalem. Well now Kerry swears he didn't know it was from Hamas (who did he think it was from, Santa Claus?) ...
Secretary of What? Far be it from us to judge anyone else's career choices, but at first glance Judd Gregg's decision yesterday to leave the Senate to become Secretary of Commerce is a stumper. Mr. Gregg is an influential Republican in a party that is a single Senate vote away from irrelevance on any given issue. Meanwhile, Commerce is (to be generous) a lesser cabinet post that Mr. Gregg twice voted to abolish, and he joins an Administration whose policies aren't exactly simpatico with his voting record.
Remember The Cole. Charges against the mastermind behind the bombing of the USS Cole are dismissed. He will be retried, but not by a military commission that would have given him the death penalty he deserves.
Louie Gohmert is the voice of sanity in the face of insane government spending. Unlike Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who wants to toss the second installment of the $350 billion taxpayer dollar bailout at Wall Street and hope that this massive wad of cash sticks and does something positive for the economy, Gohmert, a Tyler Republican, instead wants to give Americans a two-month tax holiday. He also advocates that taxpayers should pay no federal income taxes for 2008. That's right, a two-month, $350 billion tax holiday and no income taxes for 2008.
Rich People Versus Politicians: Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, with about $60 billion in assets each, are America's richest men. With all that money, what can they force us to do? Can they take our house to make room so that another person can build an auto dealership or a casino parking lot? Can they force us to pay money into the government-run retirement Ponzi scheme called Social Security? Can Buffett and Gates force us to bus our children to schools out of our neighborhood in the name of diversity? Unless they are granted power by politicians, rich people have little power to force us to do anything.
Right Man, Right Job, Right Time. [Czech Republic President Vaclav] Klaus, a student of the great F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, is exactly the sort of leader that Europe has to have. The liberty-minded defender of free markets has the opportunity to rock the continent out of its self-inflicted economic malaise.
Giving Thanks for Self-Reliant Americans. In the Year of Bottomless Bailouts, I am most grateful this Thanksgiving for Americans who refuse to abandon thrift, personal responsibility and self-reliance. When the moochers and entitlement-mongers drive you mad, remember that our nation still serves as home to millions of citizens who do for themselves.
Stop and Think. Really. Stop and think. What does your government actually do for you? ... In short, nothing tangible in the room is a "gift" from the government. Not one thing. (This is true even if you happen to work for the government and are situated in a government owned building. All of the work on the building was subcontracted. All of the items in the building were privately produced.)
Conservatism: More Relevant Than Ever. The problem is that both political parties have failed Americans. In recent years the Republican Party, which in Reagan's hands carried the conservative standard to new heights, lost its way. Federal spending now tops $25,000 per household annually, and the coming Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid costs of 77 million retiring baby boomers threaten to add another $12,000 per household to the taxpayers' annual tab. Yet neither party offers a solution to the entitlement crisis or a real plan to cut spending.
More Polls Show Voters Weary Of DC Control Freaks As Party Loyalty Tanks. A record number of Americans say most members of Congress do not deserve to be re-elected, according to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp poll. The survey shows voter disdain for those in power in both controlling parties has grown more widespread than ever before.
Nation could be heading for a train wreck. I couldn't stand it any longer. I voted last week. My choice finally came down to a simple decision. I didn't want to support a Democratic president when it is a certainty that both the Senate and the House will be controlled by the Democrats. I didn't want to endorse a runaway Democratic train, with absolutely no restraints on big spending and high taxation. The prospect of a triumvirate consisting of Obama, Pelosi and Reid was too much for me.
Why Guns Are Better Than Butter: Woodrow Wilson's colossal expansion of government power faded soon after the war was over, and the 1920s were a period of minimalist government, ushered in by Warren Harding's promise of a "return to normalcy." Harding was swept to office on a wave of national disgust at Wilson's excesses, and the country was anxious to leave those excesses behind. But when the next national crisis struck — the Depression, under FDR — the U.S. got a massive expansion of government that, unlike Wilson's, has remained with us to the present day.
A Perfect Storm. Some elections are routine, some are important and some are historic. If Senator John McCain wins this election, it will probably go down in history as routine. But if Senator Barack Obama wins, it is more likely to be historic — and catastrophic.
First They Came for the Toddlers... The FLDS raid in Texas looks more ludicrous every day. Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Scott Henson takes aim at Judge Barbara Walther: "Excuse me, Judge? You issued a sweeping, house-to-house search warrant based on a highly questionable anonymous call that turned out to be phony. You refused to allow individual hearings for children, grouping them together like cattle."
The Counterfeiters … and the Fed: Our own Federal Reserve System has for many years been inflating our currency, effectively accomplishing what the Nazis had hoped to accomplish, albeit more gradually. Thanks to the Fed, almost $12 would be needed today to equal the purchasing power of $1 in 1945.
Foreign policy 'experience': [Scroll down] A plain fact should be noted: No governor ever had foreign policy experience before becoming president — not Ronald Reagan, not Franklin D. Roosevelt, nor any other governor. It is hard to know how many people could possibly have had foreign policy experience before reaching the White House besides a secretary of state or a secretary of defense.
GW's War: About one third of the citizenry thought GW's War needed to be waged, one third did not think the war was necessary and were in fact vehemently against it, the other third were indifferent to the whole concept. GW was a lousy speaker and had trouble rallying the citizenry. Few nations supported GW's War as allies. Some in Congress who had voted for the war, later changed their minds. As GW's War dragged on, they began to withhold funding.
Stalinism Was Just as Bad as Nazism. There is really no big difference between Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia. When World War II began in September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were allies; indeed Stalin and Hitler launched the war together.
Why Obama's Communist Connections Are Not Headlines: I have seen for quite some time that although we won the Cold War — and defeated the Soviet communist empire — America is vulnerable to varying degrees of collectivism, wealth redistribution, "creeping socialism" (Ronald Reagan's phrase), class-warfare rhetoric, and generally milder, more palatable (but still dangerous) forms of disguised Marxism. Why? How? The answer is simple: The history and truth about communism is not taught by our educators.
Biden's Financial History Disqualifies Him For High Office. If a candidate for high office does a spectacularly poor job in managing his own family's finances, why on earth should we trust him in a national leadership position at a time of acute economic crisis? Senator Joe Biden's recently disclosed tax returns display a consistent pattern of poor judgment and shabby values that ought to disqualify him for the vice presidency or any other post of significant responsibility.
Hillary's Growing Shadow: Everyone is puzzled why the Democratic candidate isn't at least 10 points ahead. It seems the more Americans get used to Barack Obama, the less they want him as president — and the more Democrats will soon regret not nominating Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton Will Not Go Quietly, Again. Hillary Clinton is suggesting that her supporters be allowed to enter her name for nomination at the Democratic Convention. It would supposedly be cathartic for them, while also recognizing Hillary's historic role of being the first woman to blow an almost-certain shot at being the party's standard-bearer.
Alexander Solzhenitsyn feeds the darkest temptation. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning writer who died this week, spotted the danger back when it was called communism. Mind you, it took no great brains to see evil in an ideology that was trying to destroy him. After all, this Russian war hero had been arrested on wild charges of slandering Stalin and sent to the Gulag, where millions had died.
Fields of Water. If the terrible Midwest floods have a silver lining, it is the grit and self-reliance that residents have shown in coping with the disaster. Iowans in particular haven't blamed everyone else for their version of Katrina. They've been following orders on when to evacuate, volunteering to lay sandbags to protect still-dry areas, and are already planning how they'll clean up the mess when the floodwaters subside.
The Editor says...
Notice that in Iowa there was no looting, nobody blaming the White House for the rain, nobody permanently evacuated to another state, and there will probably be nobody from Cedar Rapids spending the next two years in a hotel at FEMA's expense.
A Constitutional President in 2008. Super Tuesday is behind us, and for many there were no surprises. The GOP presidential candidates who stood for the Constitution, individual liberty, and a sound economy, were marginalized by the national media and the party machine. But the machine no longer has a monopoly, and the countless millions who share our passion for liberty and limited government don't need to play by its rules and choose between supporting John McCain or staying home on Election Day.
Help Wanted: Evil Minions. The energy industry is almost universally criticized and hated. And for some reason the number of people wanting to work in it are in short supply.
The Sweet Illusion Of Socialism: Will America hold to the principles of capitalism and free enterprise or will it embrace elements of socialism, Marxism and communism? Those are our choices.
In-Game Advertising: Yet Another Insult. Call me silly or naïve, or maybe just old-fashioned, but I thought commercials were a way for us to get content for free, as in "free TV" and "free radio." I've always considered that to be an acceptable trade-off: if I don't want commercials I can opt for premium services such as pay TV or satellite radio and if I'm too cheap or "fiscally challenged" to shell out for such stuff then I should just shut up and go to the bathroom when the ads come on. That isn't enough anymore, apparently.
When You Fill Up the Tank Thank Congress for High Gas Prices. The unpleasant fact is that a poorer world will be dirtier and less healthy for human beings, and not so great for nature either. Unless we want to concede that the earth would be better off completely without human beings — and just who would judge it so anyway? — then it is time to recognize that both human beings and the earth will be better off the wealthier we become. And for the foreseeable future, that wealthier future will depend upon drilling for oil.
Broadcasting Obama: With Obama's nomination a lock, there's been increasing discussion of what his Presidency might produce. Time and again, conversation comes back to this question of a black president and America's image abroad. Yet, no one can name a single country that isn't ages behind the U.S. in terms of diversity and integration. The notion that there's a soft and cuddly world just waiting for America to catch up is not "global consciousness" but the very opposite: it is an American fantasy born of prosperity and isolation.
America's Most Miserable Cities: Imagine living in a city with the country's highest rate for violent crime and the second-highest unemployment rate. As an added kicker you need more Superfund dollars allocated to your city to clean up contaminated toxic waste sites than just about any other metro. Unfortunately, this nightmare is a reality for the residents of Detroit.
McCain's Costly Tax on Energy: What do John McCain, Environmental Defense, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Pew Center on Climate Change have in common? They have united to support a massive new tax increase on energy — which will raise costs throughout the economy and threaten the vitality of, among others, the oil and automobile industries.
FARC's 'Human Rights' Friends. It may have taken years for army intelligence to infiltrate the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, and it may have been tough to convincingly impersonate rebels. But what seems to have been a walk in the park was getting the FARC to believe that an NGO was providing resources to help it in the dirty work of ferrying captives to a new location.
A Myth Dies In Colombia Jungle. One of the most positive side effects of Colombia's rescue of 15 hostages from FARC communist terrorists was in dispelling the myth of revolutionary Che Guevara as a romantic hero. Che, after all, was with the bad guys last week. The Colombian soldiers who freed the hostages wore Che T-shirts to convince the FARC they were fellow terrorists, and it actually worked. Within minutes, the hostages were handed over.
Hell on Earth: "One day, I discovered three kernels of corn in a small pile of cow dung, picked them up and cleaned them with my sleeve before eating," says Shin In-kun at www.northkoreanrefugees.com. "As miserable as it may seem, that was my lucky day." You may be asking yourself in what twisted world could that revolting story be considered a lucky day? Welcome to North Korea.
When Will North Korea Collapse? An array of intelligence analysts, Asian and American scholars, specialists in think tanks, and workers in relief organizations have renewed speculation that the North Korean regime of Kim Jong Il is in danger of collapsing because that nation is on the brink of mass starvation and mounting isolation.
What do Yucca Mountain and Guantanamo Bay have in common? Neither is a great spot for a family vacation. And each is under the control of the federal government. … Yucca Mountain is where the government wants to keep incredibly dangerous substances — nuclear waste — until we figure out a better way to handle it. And Guantanamo Bay is where the federal government keeps incredibly dangerous people — jihadi enemy combatants — until we figure out a better way to handle them.
Some Thoughts On A Hypothetical Constitutional Crisis: Strategists for both John McCain and Barack Obama are chewing over a hypothetical scenario wherein Barack Obama recieves millions more votes than John McCain, but, because of the distribution of votes in the electoral college, McCain would become the president. … One Republican who has advised the McCain campaign thinks the country "can stand that sort of thing once every 100 years, but not twice in 8 years — especially with the Republicans winning every time."
A Party Turned Upside-Down. Without a large body of workers at the local level, a political party would be like an army with only generals and no privates. This is just plain common sense, but it seems to have escaped the notice of the Republican Party, a vast organization with lots of generals and colonels and [very] few privates. Nobody has focused on building the Republican Party since Ronald Reagan took on the job.
If GOP Runs a RINO for President, The Party Will Crash and Burn. Republicans in Name Only, or RINOs, are a great asset to the Democrat Party and the news media. … Democrats believe Iraq is another Vietnam? Well, so does Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Democrats are fearful that a Justice Alito may overturn Roe v. Wade? Well, so does Republican Senators Arlen Specter, Olympia Snow and Lincoln Chaffee. The Democrats fear we might be "abusing" terrorists? Well so does Senator John McCain.
Phony Soldiers and Phony Senators: Recently, at least 41 Democratic Senators, joined by a howling mob including George Soros' Media Matters, sought to silence Rush Limbaugh because of his reference to "phony" anti war soldiers. Limbaugh's comments, taken in context, referred to Jesse Macbeth, a confessed and convicted phony, whose faked but graphic war crimes confessions received far wider media notice than his later confession. He had been discharged in boot camp after 40 days of service.
Where are the 'human shields' in Burma? As it becomes increasingly apparent that a blood bath against innocents is taking place in Burma, the disingenuous nature of the human shields who flew to Iraq to tie themselves to installations — civilain and military — in a vain effort to forestall the U.S. invasion and the eventual deposing of a ruthless dictator becomes even clearer. Not one of them is even speaking out against this outrage, let alone making any effort to prevent this butchery. Remember. They did not and will not stand with the civilians in any place where people are fighting for democracy.
James Dobson Interview: It's About Principle, not Pragmatism. "Here's why I cannot vote for Rudy Giuliani. He's pro-abortion. He's never repudiated gay marriage in New York City or at least the civil unions in New York City. He's called a champion of gay rights. Rudy is opposed to school choice. He's in favor of open borders. … He's been married three times. When his second wife got sick of it she threw him out and he went to live with two homosexuals."
The National Church of Socialism: The financially and demographically struggling National Council of Churches (NCC) is mulling over a new "Social Creed for the 21st Century" that will succinctly articulate its left-leaning political activism. Many of the NCC's heterodox officials and activist supporters could not affirm traditional Christian theological creeds. For them, political creeds are the desired alternative.
The Borking of American Politics: If you think American politics have gotten nastier, crueler and more symbolic over the last 20 years, blame Ted Kennedy. This month marks the 20th anniversary of the borking of Judge Robert Bork, Ronald Reagan's failed Supreme Court nominee. And it was Ted Kennedy's bilious bugle blast that brought the man down.
Veneration of evil. [Che Guevara] continues to be a symbol of freedom and revolutionary fervour and purity for people who can't read or think. Che was Fidel Castro's right-hand man. Despite the fact leftie morons from Pierre Trudeau to Michael Moore venerate the Cuban totalitarian state, it is just a prison masquerading as a nation. … Che was put in charge of turning Cuba into a modern industrial nation. He failed miserably, thus consigning Cuba to a future as a colony of the Soviet Union, exchanging sugar for fighter planes.
Columnist Ann Coulter Declares 'Jews Need to Be Perfected by Becoming Christians'. Slash-and-burn columnist Ann Coulter shocked a cable TV talk-show audience Monday when she declared that Jews need to be "perfected" by becoming Christians, and that America would be better off if everyone were Christian.
In Defense of Ann Coulter. Ann is promoting a book and in those circumstances she accepts all invitations, even into hostile territory. She came on Deutsch's CNBC show,The Big Idea, the interview appearing over a chiron (sic) reading: "Being Extreme Makes Millions." The host is a blow-dried pretty boy who wears half-glasses down on his nose to create a kind of Michael-Landon-meets-Erkel effect.
The Editor says...
Chyron is becoming a generic term for a superimposed television title, the kind that appears over every TV program to identify whoever's speaking. Practically every television station has a Chyron graphics system. Thirty years ago such a machine was called a "character generator" because it was just a typesetting machine for television. Now they also put up banners and backgrounds and all sorts of annoying "bugs" and logos all over the screen. You can't produce a competitive TV news show without one, and yet, graphics overload is one of TV's most annoying traits.
Why I Am A Conservative: I became a conservative because … I don't get upset that the federal government "doesn't care about me." In fact, I'd be pleased if it forgets that I exist. … Having a government that is too involved in our lives is far more of a threat than a government that isn't involved enough. … Life begins at the moment of conception and we have an obligation to speak up for the children that are being exterminated via abortion since they can't speak up for themselves.
LOST: The Law of the Sea Treaty
Now on a page of its own, located here.
Bush Amazes. At the trial, the prosecutor had conceded that there was no underlying crime and that Libby had not "outed" anyone. But then in the sentencing phase the prosecutor completely falsified himself and claimed Libby had done serious national security damage — by naming an employee of the CIA who was not covert and not overseas, contrary to his statements at trial. The judge, who must have been a real whiz in law school (yes, I know he was appointed by Bush), sentenced Libby, a first offender who will never be in court again, to two and a half years in prison. It was insane.
Nine Members of Congress Who Should Resign Right After Larry Craig. There has been a lot of talk about Larry Craig's on again/off again decision to resign from Congress. Like most Republicans, I'm of the opinion that Craig should resign, but wouldn't it be great if he could take a few people with him?
Genocide Nearly Forgotten by History. The past week saw the anniversary of one of the great tragedies of history overlooked by most of the US mainstream media. … We must remember what a "workers paradise" really means: The infliction of pain on the worker for the good of the government.
Smile: What all celebs can learn from O. J. Simpson. The mug shot is the ignominious I.D., captured at a moment when the subject is, all at once, shamed, humbled, frustrated, fearful, and usually at a record low of dishevelment. The mug shot is supposed to be just a bureaucratic record. In practice, however, it is punishment for being a suspect at all.
Hugo's 'utopia': Socialism's lie. Severe food shortages in Venezuela — milk, sugar, eggs and more — indicate supporters of Hugo Chavez, the country's slippery socialist strongman, are getting their just deserts. With Cuban dictator Fidel Castro as Mr. Chavez's role model, mentor and commie muse, no wonder so many suffer so much.
It's Time To Get Over Katrina Already. It's not as if hurricanes are a once a millennium event in the United States. ... People lose their homes in this country every day of the year. If it isn't a hurricane, it's an earthquake. If it isn't an earthquake, it's a tornado. If it isn't a tornado, it's a fire. If it isn't a fire, it's a flood. Yet nobody sits and frets about John Doe, age 58, who lost his house in a flash flood two years ago or Jane Doe, age 60, who had her house blown away by a twister back in 2005.
Did someone mention Hurricane Katrina?
You're Dead, I'm Healing. I believe that this early healing talk is both foolish and immoral. It is foolish because one does not speak about healing the same day (or week or perhaps even month) that one is traumatized — especially by evil. One must be allowed time for anger and grief. To speak of healing and "closure" before one goes through those other emotions is to speak not of healing but of suppression.
Read this.
Programmed to Kill: An interview with Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, the highest ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the Soviet bloc. ... Pacepa's newest book is Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination.
It's Called the Constitution. It is important to remember that President Clinton fired all 93 U.S. attorneys when he took office in 1993, and gave them only ten days to vacate their offices. This was certainly within his authority as Chief Executive and did not raise a firestorm of protest like the one that has been leveled at the current administration.
The Impending Food Fight. While we worry about gas prices, the costs of milk, meat and fresh produce silently skyrockets. So like the end of cheap energy, is the era of cheap food also finally over?
Did someone mention High Gas Prices?
General Pace latest victim of homosexual agenda, says military monitor. The president of a conservative military watchdog group says she's dismayed over the recent sudden removal of General Peter Pace as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Marine general created controversy in March when he likened homosexuality to adultery, and said the military should not condone it by allowing homosexuals to serve in the military.
General Pace and the PC Police: Marine Gen. Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should not apologize for supporting the law excluding homosexuals from the military. That law, Section 654, Title 10, was passed with veto-proof bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress in 1993. Federal courts have declared it constitutional several times. Nor should Gen. Pace be intimidated by name-calling gay activists who are berating the general for expressing his personal opinions on immorality.
Failing To Keep The Pace: The pre-emptive announcement that General Peter Pace will not be nominated for another two-year term as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is yet another recent example of Bush Administration backpedaling in the face of Congressional and media pressure.
Coulter's Inoffensive Remarks: The most recent offense took place on CNBC's Donnie Deutsch show. Interviewing Ann Coulter, Deutsch asked her what her ideal world would look like. Her response included a reference that everybody would be Christian, to which Deutsch, a practicing Jew, took offense. Probing further, he elicited from Coulter the remark that Christians believe Jews need to be "perfected." Deutsch claimed he was further offended, using the weapon of victimhood to near perfection.
Ann Coulter Wants Jews to Become Christian — So What? Those who label Ann Coulter an anti-Semite do damage to the battle against anti-Semitism. I say this as a committed Jew, a religious Jew, a Jewish writer and lecturer, a past college instructor in Jewish history, co-author of a widely read book on anti-Semitism, recipient of the American Jewish Press Association's Prize for Excellence in Jewish Commentary, instructor in Torah at the American Jewish University, and a man who has fought anti-Semitism all his life. There is nothing in what Ann Coulter said to a Jewish interviewer on CNBC that indicates she hates Jews or wishes them ill, or does damage to the Jewish people or the Jewish state.
Unnecessary Scandal. Alberto Gonzales has to go. I say this with no pleasure — he's a decent and honorable man — and without the slightest expectation that his departure will blunt the Democratic assault on the Bush administration over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. … Gonzales has allowed a scandal to be created where there was none. That is quite an achievement. He had a two-foot putt and he muffed it.
What's Wrong With Vocational School? The spread of wealth at the top of American society has created an explosive increase in the demand for craftsmen. Finding a good lawyer or physician is easy. Finding a good carpenter, painter, electrician, plumber, glazier, mason — the list goes on and on — is difficult, and it is a seller's market. Journeymen craftsmen routinely make incomes in the top half of the income distribution while master craftsmen can make six figures.
Why it's foolish to turn your back on tradition: In his brilliant essay "The Great Relearning," Tom Wolfe recounts a "curious footnote to the hippie movement." In 1968, at the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic, doctors found themselves treating diseases "no living doctor had ever encountered before, diseases that had disappeared so long ago they had never even picked up Latin names." These maladies had such names as the mange, the grunge, the itch, the twitch, the thrush, the rot.
The President's Prosecutors: [Attorney General] Gonzales yesterday said he regretted the way Congress had been informed of the personnel changes. In the meantime, let the Democrats who had Webster Hubbell and Robert F. Kennedy running the Justice Department criticize the Bush administration for politicizing the Justice Department.
Cafeteria Constitutionalism: Appointees to Madison's boards and commissions must take an oath of office to uphold the U.S. and Wisconsin constitutions. But last month the city council approved a measure allowing them to refuse to swear to uphold a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage if they disagree with it. ... It's one thing to disagree with the amendment, quite another to rewrite the constitution.
Searching for the Gipper. Is there another Ronald Reagan on the horizon for 2008, a leader who can rally the coalitions that gave Reagan an eight-year mandate? Let's examine (in alphabetical order) some of the most frequently mentioned Republican presidential candidates. Just for fun, let's create a 1-to-10 "Gipper meter." Ten would be a Republican leader of Reagan's experience, stature, vision and charisma. One would be Lincoln Chaffee.
The Next Reagan? Republicans need someone like Ronald Reagan, someone everyone knows, someone everyone likes, someone who is conservative and — most importantly — someone who would hold the presidency for eight years. What qualifications would such a candidate need? He would have to be someone who is very articulate and convincing in front of the camera, someone who exudes confidence, someone who naturally appeals to women voters, someone familiar with the news media, someone who has kept very much in the public eye and yet someone who has been away from the mess in Washington for awhile. Is there such a man? Yes, there is: Fred Thompson.
How FDR Destroyed the Dollar: Until 1933, the U. S. dollar was the among the strongest and most stable currencies in the world. With the stroke of a pen, President Franklin Roosevelt torpedoed it. We are still plagued with the resulting inflation.
Saddam's just deserts. In a final blasphemy, Saddam Hussein, who spent most of his life as a murdering secularist, went to his justified death holding a Koran and offering his soul to God, if God would accept it. If God does, He will have to commute the sentences of Saddam's mass murdering predecessors, including Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Only stupid, sadistic dictators hang — and Saddam was both. Only a minority of modern dictators have been executed for their crimes. The most bloodthirsty of all, Stalin and Mao, died in full possession of their powers, if not their faculties. Franco pulled off the same trick. Hitler cheated the hangman with a bullet in the bunker. Pol Pot lost power, but was never brought to justice and died in his bed, as did Idi Amin.
The Charlie Brown Democrats. Like Charlie Brown always believing Lucy will hold the football, Clinton and Carter raced to the kick-off of peace with a murderous dictator — only to find out that they had (surprise!) been lied to. The Clinton legacy, already shredding because of his inability to deal with al Qaeda and terrorism, has just been dealt yet another — perhaps mortal — blow by Clinton and Carter's foolish trust in the North Korean father and son dictators.
Baked Alaska for North Korea. Lil' Kim has finally gotten around to detonating his first atomic bomb, thanks to Jimmy Carter's brokering of a quick American surrender and the immediate gift of two reactors, back on the early Clinton legacy watch, which allowed the short shake-down artist with that inveterate propensity for khaki to enrich the plutonium necessary to construct his recent radioactive surprise.
Chris Wallace, Card-Carrying Democrat? In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, reporter Deborah Solomon asked "Fox News Sunday" anchor Chris Wallace what political party he belonged to. His answer: "None of your business." Oh, please. Ever heard of a little thing called public records? After five minutes of exhaustive research, we found that Wallace is a registered Democrat and has been for more than two decades.
The era of big-government conservatism must come to an end. The single-best thing the lame-duck GOP Congress can do is vote in a spending-limitation bill with balanced-budget targets for the next couple of years. This would be a spending-cap pay-as-you-go, which means that any increased spending must be offset by lower spending in other parts of the budget. Not higher taxes. Reduced spending.
Why we love government. The founders of our nation were suspicious, if not contemptuous, of government. … Today's Americans hold a different vision of government. It's one that says Congress has the right to do just about anything upon which it can secure a majority vote. Most of what Congress does fits the description of forcing one American to serve the purposes of another American. That description differs only in degree, but not in kind, from slavery.
Acts of God — or acts of reckless man? The devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina last August will be documented once again in anniversary TV specials later this month. But it's still unclear whether the terrible storm cut into the what-me-worry attitude that has led many of us to build homes below sea level, on barrier islands, on hillsides with brush that annually burn, or over earthquake faults — and then be shocked when catastrophe comes.
Sweet land of liberty ... believe it or not. There is no doubt — and I would challenge you to prove otherwise — that we live in a place and time where individual liberties and civil liberties are more extensive and more valued than they have ever been before on the face of the earth. And yet a huge number of people take the time each day to complain about how dangerous the Bush administration is, or to worry about the "all-out assault" on our civil liberties.
Defending Ann Coulter From Jersey Girls. Defending Ann Coulter, who has come under attack by Senators Hillary Clinton (D.-N.Y.) and Frank Lautenberg (D.-N.J.), seems to be an oxymoron. She is the last person who needs to be defended, given the fact that she is a lawyer who presumably can defend herself and possesses a positively frightening intellect and wit.
They Shot the Wrong Lincoln. Apart from Bush, the only person who hasn't figured out that Lincoln Chafee is a Democrat is Lincoln Chafee. … It's hard to figure why Bush would support a half-wit like Lincoln Chafee. … When the farrier business proved too taxing for Chafee's intellect, he went into the family business — politics. His father died in office, and Lincoln was appointed by the governor to serve out the remainder of Pop's term in the U.S. Senate. In terms of qualifications for the job, Chafee makes Michael Brown look like Donald Rumsfeld.
McCain Declares War on the Constitution (Again). McCain's comment reveals his willingness to impose his view of what constitutes "clean government" even though it means setting aside a fundamental right clearly and explicitly defined in the Constitution.
Revelations of Joseph Smith. After two columns on the subject of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS), I am getting lots of requests from Mormons to stop writing about "their" religion. … After I was asked to read about (and consider converting to) Mormonism, I came across some rather disturbing accusations against Joseph Smith, Jr.
The General Is a Spook: Get Over It. For the sake of argument, let's assume that those worrying loudly just didn't know that six of the 19 previous Directors [of the CIA] have been military men, and more than that if you count some who served their country in numerous different capacities, including the military (George H.W. Bush, for example).
Misery from companies. Americans should be the happiest people in history. We've got a booming economy, with 4.8 percent growth in the first quarter. Unemployment is down to 4.7 percent even as the population grows. The Dow Jones is near a historic high. But we're not happy. In a recent AP poll, 73 percent said the country is on the wrong track. Only 23 percent say we're heading in the right direction.
Owning your ideas: An essential tool for freedom. Thinking about going into business? Have an idea that you think will change the world? What if you were told that there was no way you could prevent someone from stealing your idea [especially important if your idea is successful] and exploiting it to make a profit?
Congress Should Impose Trade Sanctions on the Google-China Deal. Last week America's second largest technology company, Google, announced a program that would assist communist China's ongoing attempt to control the minds of its over 1.3 billion people. Simply put, Google will help make sure that when anyone in China looks up Tiananmen Square on the Chinese version Google is creating of its top rated search engine, that person will never see the famous picture of a student facing a Chinese Army tank.
Al Gore and the next 9-11. When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, he said, "Our Constitution is a living and breathing document" that changes its meaning over time. This week, we learned that among the things changing in Gore's Constitution is the war power. It meant one thing when Bill Clinton was president, but means another thing now.
With friends like Jack... Political Reality No. 1: The party in power gets corrupted. Political Reality No. 2: Indicted incumbents don't get re-elected.
Dr. Coburn, I Presume. Why does Barbara Boxer want to stop him from delivering babies?
The French way implodes. Socialism is an insidious poison. The vast majority of French voters seem wedded to their government-supplied goodies — failing to recognize that their economic and therefore social lives are unraveling because of that dependence.
Tortured reasoning: After decades of ignoring the fact that rights and responsibilities go together, it was perhaps inevitable that an under-educated and easily confused generation should include some who do not understand that the rights granted to captured troops by the Geneva Convention apply to those who have accepted the terms of the Geneva Convention. It does not apply to people who are not troops and who have blatantly violated the whole framework of that convention.
Republicanism in decline. The Republican Party in Washington is in trouble not because it's overrun by crooks, but because it's packed with cowards — and has degenerated into a caricature of the party that swept to power 11 years ago promising to take on the federal bureaucracy and liberate the creative genius of American society.
The Duke of Earle. [Tom] DeLay, who says he will be vindicated in court, is being targeted for doing his political job exceedingly well. That job, in part, has been to get more Republicans elected to office and to keep them there. When Democrats did it effectively for four decades, it was considered good politics. When DeLay and the Republicans do it, they are Satan's servants. [Ronnie] Earle apparently believes he has been "called" to stop them before they sin again.
The World According to J.C.: "Tedious" doesn't begin to describe the new book by America's worst ex-president. Jimmy Carter's 20th book is a tedious meditation about the appropriate uses of moral values in political life — as wisely and humbly exemplified by Himself — and of their misuses under the current Bush administration.
Privatize Fannie and Freddie. Two centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson argued that private property was the touchstone of American democracy. If he were alive today I am sure he would still be making that argument, because the idea is just as valuable now as it was then. And so I don't hesitate to argue, in the spirit of Jefferson, that Congress today is jeopardizing the American Dream.
The role of prices: What about the house that you might have purchased for $50,000 in 1970 that you're selling today? If you charged me $250,000 for it, today's price for its replacement, as opposed to what you paid for it, are you guilty of price-gouging? … Politicians would serve us better by focusing their energies on tax-gouging.
Dems' lurch to the left will hurt them in 2006. In a bizarre tactic that has left many Democrat strategists and centrist Democratic groups puzzled and disturbed, the Democratic leadership has jumped even further to the left since their last election defeats.
Will the GOP be Katrina's Biggest Casualty? Neither Tip O'Neill nor Jim Wright — two powerful former Democratic Speakers of the House famous for their big spending ways — could have said it better than Delay. The worst thing about Delay's comment is not its factual unreality, bad as that is, but what the remark says about the GOP congressional leadership's attitude about spending our tax dollars. "We've already cut it to the bone" or "there isn't any more fat to cut" or variations thereof were typical responses from O'Neill and Wright to critics of excessive federal spending.
Time to confront reality. Thanks to a series of natural disasters, unspeakable acts of terrorism and the responses to them, this country is headed beyond a mere budget crisis. We're drifting toward to a five-alarm financial fiasco.
Situational libertarianism: Liberties should be as unlimited as possible — unless and until there arises a real threat to the open society. Neo-Nazis are pathetic losers. Why curtail civil liberties to stop them? But when a real threat — such as jihadism — arises, a liberal democratic society must deploy every resource, including the repressive powers of the state, to deter and defeat those who would abolish liberal democracy.
Is it time for conservatives to dump the GOP? Thanks to the incredible expansion of federal entitlements, regulations and pork spending sanctioned by the GOP leadership in Congress since 2001, there is virtually no chance that Big Government is going to be shrunk even a little any time soon. And since there is no sign the folks running Congress are willing to change course, why shouldn't conservatives dump the GOP?
Judgment Day: President Bush should listen to his base, not his opponents. What's wrong with this picture? President Bush was quick to slap his conservative base, yet he has shown an inexhaustible supply of sensitivity to those who plot to derail his presidency. Early on, the president was solicitous of Senator Ted Kennedy, inviting him to the White House residence to watch a movie and share popcorn. He even named the main Department of Justice building after Robert Kennedy. In return, Kennedy has never missed an opportunity to stick a knife between the president's ribs.
What Happened at Chappaquiddick: In a sequence of events that instantly became famous, Senator Kennedy escaped from the submerged vehicle and swam to shore. By 2:30 a.m. he had made his way back to his hotel in Edgartown, where he was sighted in the lobby. He made 17 phone calls to family members and associates. But not until 10 hours after the accident did he call the police to tell them about the car crash — and the other person in the car, who had died.
See also Chappaquiddick: A Profile in Cowardice.
Congress and the Federal Reserve Erode Your Dollars. Texas Rep. Ron Paul does not blame the Chinese yuan for the drastic decline of the dollar. Rather, Dr. Paul attributes it to Congress – which spends more money than is brought in by taxes each year – and the Federal Reserve – which over the last 15 years has increased the money supply by trillions of dollars.
The Top 8 Reasons Not To Support Condi Rice For President In 2008: Among other things, she has never run for office before, she's pro-abortion, and she's pro-Affirmative Action. Most of her other domestic views are completely unknown.
A Libertarian President? Don't Laugh! Libertarian ideas, such as expanding individual liberty, re-limiting government, and protecting private property rights, have become much more respectable during the past two decades. Less progress, however, appears to be taking place in politics. Nevertheless, I predict the President of the United States elected in 2016 will be the candidate of the Libertarian Party.
Making intelligent errors. Since intelligence is always less than perfect, we're forced to decide which error is least costly. Leading up to our war with Iraq, the potential errors confronting us were: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he didn't. Or, he didn't have weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he did. Both errors are costly, but which is more costly? It's my guess that it would have been more costly for us to make the first error: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and we incorrectly assumed he didn't.
What's In a Name? The folks who brought you "compassionate conservatism" now offer "The Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism." Perfect: A war that's not called a war for fear of making people think about war, which is waged against an enemy who is not identified for fear of offending mass-murderers and the people who coddle them, and which occurs everywhere on the planet so no one is left out, but nowhere specific so no one is put in.
Snuff out this silly suit. The ongoing federal lawsuit against tobacco companies is an outrage against the Rule of Law and against the very idea of limited federal government. This amount demanded in the suit, inherited by the Bush administration from the Clintonistas, was last week whittled down from its original $280 billion to a "mere" $10 billion. It is past time for the administration to administer the coup de grace to this lawsuit, for it makes a mockery of our tort system.
Memín pinguin: On the heels of Mexican President Vicente Fox insulting U.S. civil rights groups by opining that Mexican immigrants in the United States — legal or otherwise — are filling jobs "not even blacks" want to fill, along comes Memín Pinguin. And once again, the Mexicans don't know what all the fuss is about.
Cloning for dollars: Lost in all the hand-wringing are some inconvenient facts for advocates of embryonic stem-cell research: "Any potential therapy [using embryonic stem cells] is years away from being tested in humans." That statement is not my assessment. It's the assessment of that bastion of a secular business worldview: Investor's Business Daily.
Municipal Broadband Is Not a Public Utility. Broadband, we are told, is too important a resource to be left to the "vagaries of the marketplace." It apparently doesn't matter that as a group, telephone, cable, satellite, and wireless companies have succeeded in getting broadband to more than 90 percent of the zip codes in the U.S. It doesn't matter that the U.S. leads the world with 34 million wireline broadband connections, accounting for more than 20 percent of the worldwide total of 150 million broadband lines at the end of 2004.
Sovereignty hangs on in Europe. The European Union, which has a flag no one salutes and an anthem no one knows, now seeks ratification of a constitution few have read. Surely only its authors have read its turgid earnestness without laughing, which is one reason why the European project is foundering.
The Terri Schiavo Subsection
Protecting the lives of others is fundamental to civilization. Protecting family members and others who cannot defend themselves is fundamental to a civilized society. Terri Schiavo's family, and many others, tried to protect her because that is what wild animals and civilized humans do for their own kind. When a migrating goose is ill or injured, other geese stay with the downed goose until it can fly again or dies. They do not drown the disabled goose so they can conveniently resume their flight.
Schiavo case matters in symbol and substance. Terri Schiavo is a symbol in the battle over life-and-death issues that inconveniently, but necessarily, confront us.
There are No Excuses for Dehydrating the Disabled. "Terri Schiavo's autopsy results confirm what was feared — she was disabled, and her death was due to the deliberate denial of hydration," said Wendy Wright, CWA's senior policy director. "The autopsy report described Terri's medical history and condition in detail, but the cold reality of the truth is that her cause of death was 'dehydration.' Terri Schiavo died because the court ordered the removal of the instrument that provided her water.
Cruel and unusual: If the tragic case of Terri Schiavo shows nothing else, it shows how easily "the right to die" can become the right to kill. It is hard to believe that anyone, regardless of their position on euthanasia, would have chosen the agony of starvation and dehydration as the way to end someone's life.
Starved for justice. How about a Republican governor sending in the National Guard to stop an innocent American woman from being starved to death in Florida? Republicans like the military. Democrats get excited about the use of military force only when it's against Americans.
Orwell and Terri Schiavo: They say that Terri is being "allowed to die." No. She is being made to die. All across America, in hospitals, mental wards and institutions for the severely disabled, there are people who, if we withdrew our care for them, would die. We wouldn't call this "allowing" them to die. We would call it scandalous neglect.
Some final notes on the Terri Schiavo case: While conservative opinion was severely splintered, liberal opinion seemed monolithic: Let her die. Liberals usually rally to the side of vulnerable people, but not in this case. Democrats talked abstractly about procedures and rules, a reversal of familiar roles. I do not understand why liberal friends defined the issue almost solely in terms of government intruding into family matters. Liberals are famously willing to enter family affairs to defend individual rights, opposing parental-consent laws, for example. Why not here?
Thoughts of woman in 'waking coma' revealed. Neuroscientists have reignited the debate over whether patients in a vegetative state are conscious of their surroundings, by claiming that a woman in such a 'waking coma' can respond to verbal commands. … After years of studying the brains of vegetative patients, this is the first evidence, the researchers say, of awareness in such a patient.
Mother in coma laughs at her children's jokes. A mother of two who has spent two years in a coma has started chuckling at her children's jokes. It was the first sound Andrea Brushneen, 31, had made since suffering severe head injuries in a car crash.
Device wakes man with severe brain injuries. A man with severe brain injuries who spent six years in a near-vegetative state can now chew his food, watch a movie and talk with family thanks to a brain pacemaker that may change the way such patients are treated, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday [8/1/2007].
Implant boosts activity in injured brain. Brain function has been improved in a patient who was in a minimally conscious state, by electrically stimulating a specific brain region with implanted electrodes. The achievement raises questions about the treatment of other patients who have been in this condition for years, the researchers say.
Sleeping pill Zolpidem awakens girl from coma. A girl who has spent six years in a coma is showing signs of life after taking a sleeping pill. Amy Pickard, 23, had lain in her bed, unable to eat or breathe for herself since falling unconscious in 2001. … She is one of 360 people taking part in a worldwide trial of Zolpidem as a treatment for people in comas. Sixty per cent of patients taking part in the study have started showing signs of life.
Boycott Proctor & Gamble. Procter & Gamble, makers of Crest toothpaste, Tide detergent, and Pampers diapers, has publicly thrown their support and money behind the homosexual political agenda. The company recently wrote to all their Cincinnati employees urging them to support the overturning of a city law which forbids giving special rights to homosexuals. Procter & Gamble is believed to be the first company to support the political agenda of the homosexual movement.
The Disappearing Dollar: Since the last links between the dollar and gold were severed in 1971, the dollar essentially has operated as an article of faith. Christopher Mayer, writing for the Ludwig von Mises Institute, states: "Faith that paper money itself was of any lasting value would have struck our forebears as patently absurd."
There's No Glass Floor. When Carly Fiorina was recently terminated as chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, the world's second-largest computer company, it renewed charges that a glass ceiling and gender gap keep women down. That is a strange response to this case, and more evidence that gender nonsense still holds sway.
Not yours to give. What about President Bush's $350 million commitment for earthquake and tsunami relief — is that just as praiseworthy? Let's look at it. Charity is reaching into one's own pockets to assist his fellow man in need. Reaching into someone else's pocket to assist one's fellow man hardly qualifies as charity. When done privately, we deem it theft, and the individual risks jail time.
Note: The article above alludes to this much earlier one:
"Not Yours to Give", an excerpt from The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis (1884).
Congress is Wrong to Defund Strategic Programs. This is not an arms race; it is prudence. The issue at hand is nothing more complicated than having a nuclear arsenal of the right size, flexibility, and quality and studying how such an arsenal should be developed. For the sake of ensuring that this vital capability remains at the forefront of defense planning, Congress should reinstate funding for these programs.
Hysteria: Vioxx — when taken in very high dosages and for a long period of time — is suspected of causing cardiovascular problems for a small number of patients. Two others, Celebrex and Aleve, might when taken in huge doses and for a long time cause similar problems. The makers of Vioxx imprudently hauled it off the market — an invitation for the trial lawyers to pounce. The makers of Celebrex and Aleve have acted more prudently.
Painkiller panic: Nobody claims [Vioxx] is dangerous if the normal 25 mg dose is taken for only a couple of weeks … The hullabaloo about questionable risks from chronic overuse of such beneficent drugs as Celebrex and Alleve may yet result in truly serious health risks if it ends up contributing to the FDA's terrifying bureaucratic urge to deny doctors and their patients timely access to vital drugs.
Better answers: The case for Judeo-Christian values. There is an epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam.
Humor: U.N. Money-for-Peace Scam May Force Annan to Resign. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan today vigorously denied allegations that he has overseen a complex, fraudulent scheme to pilfer billions of dollars from 191 nations under the guise of providing "global peace services."
Ten years after the "Contract With America". When Republicans took control of Congress in 1994, it was widely hailed as a revolution. Now, 10 years later, it is looking more and more like a coup d'etat that only changed the leadership while leaving everything else unchanged. … It looks more and more like the Republicans have become the Democrats they overthrew in 1994.
"Mega Fix": The dazzling political deceit that led to 9/11. In a stunning and surprisingly entertaining new 90-minute DVD video documentary $&8212; titled "Mega Fix" $&8212; Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Jack Cashill leads the viewer from Oklahoma City to Dubrovnik, where Ron Brown's plane crashed, to the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia to the destruction of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island to the Olympic Park bombing. As Cashill proves beyond dispute in this DVD, these are not multiple conspiracies, but all part of one major political fix.
The Facts on Halliburton: Why do leftists demonize Halliburton? What proof exists of their claims of corruption? What exactly has Halliburton done to profit from American military casualties? Indeed, have they profited from military casualties? Is there a special relationship between the Bush administration and Halliburton so that the company receives contracts without observing the normal bidding process? It is certainly true that during a two year period Halliburton's revenue from Defense Department contracts doubled. However, that increase in revenue occurred from 1998 to 2000 — during the Clinton administration.
The Editor says...Halliburton wins contracts for oil field work in the Middle East for the same reason that AT&T won the classified contract to operate the AUTOVON system.* They have the specialized equipment and the trained, experienced people to do the job, and they can get started today, if necessary. It is a waste of time and effort to shop around for small, minority-owned, or "disadvantaged" businesses when there are huge, urgent and highly specialized projects at hand.
Kerry-Edwards and Halliburton's fallen. It's too bad that Mr. Edwards confined himself to merely scoring points against Mr. Cheney and neglected to acknowledge the supreme sacrifices some Halliburton employees and members of their families have made in the war effort. Forty-eight Halliburton employees have died in Iraq since the start of the war last year.
But why Dubai? It's closer to the action. Texas is the can-do state. But there's no denying that Dubai has become the can-do sheikdom and a potent rival to Houston's supremacy as the center of the oil business. The move of Halliburton's corporate base from Houston to Dubai is a stark example of the industry's shift in power from North America. The company is moving closer to the oil fields of the Middle East and Africa and its big national oil firms that control financing, exploration and production.
A secular-to-English dictionary. Secular speak is a way of making nasty things sound nice, rather like applying lipstick to a pig. After the application, the pig is still ugly and smells bad. So it is with secular principles supporting immorality and the culture of death.
Women and Politics: Reconsidering the 19th Amendment. They sit home waiting for their husbands to bring home the money, or toil away at little jobs dreamed up to assuage the egos of bourgeois women living in the suburbs. Consequently, the typical liberal woman's political calculus is based on budgeting, not earning. They have no idea how the money materializes. But they have lots of opinions on how to spend it. They claim to be Republicans, but they are no more Republican than Bill Clinton. In fact, they adore Bill Clinton.
Why the 9/11 Fund was a mistake. In many cases, the government ended up paying a fortune to people who had already collected a fortune from private donors. USA Today reported in 2002 that relatives of New York police officers received an average of $929,000 in charitable funds. The families of firefighters and ambulance crews got $1,037,000.
The problems at Treasury: I was working at Treasury in 1989 during its 200th anniversary. President George H.W. Bush got a big laugh from the crowd when he noted that George Washington had nominated Alexander Hamilton to be secretary in the morning, he was confirmed by the Senate the same afternoon and sworn into office that evening.
The coming fiscal civil war: Unless politicians in Washington, D.C., start cutting government today, Social Security and Medicare will eventually drive the United States into fiscal civil war. It will not be a shooting war, pitting brother against brother. It will be a taxing-and-spending war, pitting grandparents against grandchildren.
How 9-11 happened: We don't need a "commission" to find out how
Bush had no advance warning of 9/11 attacks. So what has all this "damaging" testimony at the 9/11 Commission told us so far? Contrary to what the conspiracy fans would have you believe, we've learned that the administration had no advance warning of the attacks.
The Triumph Of the 9/11 Commission: Finally, an official body of the American government has come out and said what needs to be said: that the enemy is "Islamist terrorism… not just 'terrorism…' some generic evil." The 9/11 commission in its final report even declares that Islamist terrorism is the "catastrophic threat" facing America.
Fact and farce in the romance of states' rights: Simply stated, states' rights in this case really means full power to state courts, which are being allowed to create (rather than interpret) laws in defiance of the democratic process and in contempt of the clear preference of a majority of Americans, including both presidential candidates and most elected officials.
Love America or love to hate America? Tell me, when was the last time you saw a rickety boat leave this country for the shores of Cuba? Or throngs of wayward Americans seeking haven — in Mexico?
The dumbing down of America: I wish to make an observation that I dare say most of you are going to find both offensive and insensitive. I really don't expect to make any friends here, but I may just cause a few people to think for a few minutes.
The Civilian Conservation Corps and the roots of the USA's police state. It is ironic that the first "C" in the CCC refers to the "Civilian" Conservation Corps because the program was actually run by the Army. CCC enrollees were organized and transported by the War Department. Usually, they were shipped far from home to the socialist labor camps. … Most enlistees began with a five-day boot camp at a military base where they got physical training and orientation. Discipline at most camps was military too, with marching, formations, KP duty and "lights out" orders at night. Photographs show that officers at the camps wore military uniforms and used military titles.
Editorial Comment: President Reagan was everything that Bill Clinton and John Kerry are not. So many editorials have been written since Reagan died, I could probably make another page just about Reagan, but I won't. This one article is enough:
So Now They Think He Was Charming. Reagan was a bulldog, completely, implacably right-wing on every issue. He was the right-wing Energizer Bunny. He never quit and he kept beating liberals. He cut taxes 25 percent across the board his first year in office; he walked away from Gorbachev at Reykjavik; he fired all those air traffic controllers — and wouldn't let them come back even when they wanted to; he gave speeches about "welfare queens" and polluting trees; he nominated Antonin Scalia and Robert Bork to the Supreme Court...
Well... maybe just one more.
Reagan changed the world. Few Americans realize that President Reagan's economic policy won the Cold War by rejuvenating capitalism. Members of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, with whom I spoke in Moscow during the Soviet Union's final months, agreed that it was President Reagan's confidence in capitalism, not his defense buildup, that caused Soviet leaders to lose their confidence.
Cut the Spending, Stupid. Too few in Washington recognize that a sizeable majority of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts benefited millions of working families across the country by lowering their income tax rates, lifting the so-called marriage penalty, and raising the value of the child credit to $1,000 from $500. Repealing the tax cuts won't lower the deficit much, and neither party seems to want a balanced budget enough to cut spending.
Shooting for the stars: The Bush proposal has less to do with a vision of man's destiny than with a totally dysfunctional government agency. NASA gave us the glory of Apollo, then spent the next three decades twirling around in space in low earth orbit studying zero-G nausea. It's crazy and it might have gone on forever had it not been for the Columbia tragedy. Columbia made painfully clear what some of us have been saying for years: It is not only pointless to continue orbiting endlessly around the earth; it is ridiculously expensive and indefensibly risky.
Getting rid of Saddam was U.S. policy long before Bush. One day Saddam is crawling out of a spider hole, and shortly thereafter Libya's Col. Gadhafi is inviting inspectors over for tea. For a complete list of ripple effects, read William Safire's Jan. 12 column in The New York Times.
Editor's Note: The following article was written February 7, 2003, and is still very timely.
Michael Jackson descends. Nearly everyone loves the idea of fame and fortune, but at what cost? As the news headlines tell us almost every day, some of the richest and most famous people turn out to be the unhappiest, most demented people in the world.
Turning Back The Clock: It's Not A Bad Thing. How many of us wouldn't long for a simpler time in which a single breadwinner could afford to not only pay the mortgage but also raise a family and put a kid or two through college? Housing was cheap back in the '50s and '60s relative to wages. Teachers, bakers and candlestick makers could afford a home in any city.
How Clinton Kept Bin Laden Free: This is the last installment of a four-part excerpt from Richard Miniter's new book, Losing Bin Laden.
Keep Iraqi POWs off American dole: An estimated 6,000 enemy Iraqi soldiers have resettled in the U.S. at public expense since 1993. Their welcome gifts included air travel, Medicaid, job and language-training assistance, health care, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), food stamps, Refugee Cash Assistance, and other welfare and housing benefits worth about $7,000 per person.
If State Government Doesn't Do It, Who Will? Claiming that there would be no schools if the government didn't build them is as silly as claiming that there would be no homes or churches if the government didn't build them.
My name is Adolf: Among the patriotic lesson plans for 9-11 was one proposed by the National Council for Social Studies, which recommends a short story titled "My Name is Osama." Calculatedly inciting hatred toward white American boys, the story is about a nasty little boy, "Todd," who taunts an Iraqi immigrant named "Osama."
All the material about judicial vacancies, filibusters in the Senate, and lawyers in general, has been moved here.
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How Jesse Helms Made a Difference. Jesse Helms was an influential television commentator in North Carolina when he decided to leave the Democratic Party, winning a U.S. Senate seat as a Republican in 1972. He went on to win four more terms, with a reputation as the Senate's most principled warrior on behalf of social conservatism, anti-Communism, limits on union power, and an assertive foreign policy that rejected State Department caution. Like Reagan, many of his views appear to have been validated.
Jesse Helms: Republican Senator for North Carolina. A long-term member of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee and later its chairman, at one time during Bill Clinton's administration he held up 400 promotions in the State Department, the passage of 12 foreign treaties and the approval of 30 ambassadors. Gaining worldwide notoriety for his extreme right-wing views, he voted against abortion, détente, labour unions, Medicare, social security and school desegregation, and for the return of the Panama Canal.
Jesse Helms: Helms was best known as the five-term North Carolina Senator who drove liberals crazy before his retirement in 2002. But his most important role in history arguably took place in 1976, when he and political ally Tom Ellis helped to resurrect Ronald Reagan's fading run for President.
Jesse Helms: American Hero. The institution of the United States Senate was not been quite the same without him and we in NC are proud of the role that this unique and special "Tarheel" played in the history of our country and on the world stage. He will be profoundly missed.
Died on the Fourth of July. It is easy to rattle off a long list of what Senator No opposed. First and foremost was Communism. As a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he was an aggressive and outspoken critic of the Soviet Union. … He was against many other things as well: federal funding of obscene art, ineffective aid to foreign governments, and the continual encroachments of Big Government on everyday life.
Dancing on the grave of Jesse Helms. [Scroll down] More than 16 years ago, the scholar Charles Horner observed in Commentary* that for many people Helms had become a "symbol of the evil against which all enlightened people are automatically ranged." As with the poisonous rhetoric of today's pathological George W. Bush-haters, the point of the virulence expressed toward Helms was typically character-assassination, not contention — it was aimed at demonizing the man rather than debating or disproving his ideas.
He quit rather than lower flag for Helms. L.F. Eason III gave up the only job he'd ever had rather than lower a flag to honor former U.S. Sen. Jesse Helms. Eason, a 29-year veteran of the state Department of Agriculture, instructed his staff at a small Raleigh lab not to fly the U.S. or North Carolina flags at half-staff Monday, defying a directive sent to all state agencies by Gov. Mike Easley. When a superior ordered the lab to follow the directive, Eason decided to retire rather than pay tribute to Helms.
A Lesson Even Liberals Can Learn from Jesse Helms: What a contrast Jesse Helms was to so many of the politicians today who work so hard for approval from the media. On a personal level, Helms was cordial to even his fiercest political opponents, but he did not care much about what others said about him.
Jesse Helms and Mangled Manners: When Helms announced his retirement from the Senate in 2001, the media elite made their own distaste very clear. "He was so wonderfully odious," declared top Newsweek editor Evan Thomas. "He was very comforting to the east coast media establishment to know that there was an evil guy out there that you could really fear."
War on Bloggers?
Apparently the FCC is attempting to strangle free speech on the internet using Campaign Finance Reform as leverage.
New: The coming crackdown on blogging. In just a few months, [FCC Commissioner Bradley Smith] warns, bloggers and news organizations could risk the wrath of the federal government if they improperly link to a campaign's Web site. Even forwarding a political candidate's press release to a mailing list, depending on the details, could be punished by fines.
Editorial Comment: FINES?? If I don't pay the fine, will the FCC suspend my Free Speech License? Let's clear this up right away — anything I say on this web site is an exercise of free speech, which is (supposed to be) protected by the Constitution. To prohibit the free exchange of information and opinion over the internet or in a newspaper is a clear violation of the First Amendment.
Update:
FEC Debates Blog Rules. The Federal Election Commission says Web logs just might be a threat to democracy and it's considering whether to police them. The issue, being discussed during FEC hearings on Tuesday and Wednesday, is whether some Web sites actually provide unregulated benefits to specific political campaigns. The famously free-spirited Web community is fighting back.
Free speech under siege: The case of Kirby Wilbur. It is not easy to build a national television network. Most major newspapers enjoy near monopolies in their towns. On the other hand anyone can start a blog, and very many can and do start and manage radio stations. Podcasting and internet broadcasting will soon make that as easy as blogging — if it is still legal to do so.
Much more information is available from The FEC vs. Blogs by Michelle Malkin.
The plan to silence Internet journalists: The McCain-Feingold Act of 2002 empowers federal judges and Federal Election Commissioners to determine who is allowed to say what about political candidates in all electronic media. On Sept. 18, 2004, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the FEC to extend its enforcement of McCain-Feingold to the Internet. In the face of a massive outcry from bloggers, the FEC backed down from fully implementing Judge Kollar-Kotelly's order. However, the order stands. Sooner or later, it will be enforced. Proposals are already on the table to require bloggers to register with the government and to report to the FEC any election-related blogging they undertake as "political contributions" subject to campaign finance law.
Update:
Who's afraid of the FEC? You can now blog to your heart's content on the Internet. The Federal Election Commission says so. Yippee! In a unanimous ruling, the FEC "gave" Internet bloggers the same "media exemption" from federal government regulation that newspapers enjoy. (You know, that "freedom of the press" loophole.) … Next thing you know, the Defense Department will announce, to much fanfare, that it won't be quartering soldiers in our homes.
The Barrett Report
The earliest report:
Frist to Press for Release of Clinton IRS Report. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said Wednesday morning [4/27/2005] that he'll press for the release of findings by independent counsel David Barrett, whose probe into former Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros reportedly concluded that Clinton officials at the Internal Revenue Service conducted politically motivated audits of White House enemies.
... and the latest:
Clinton cover-ups: Lost in the tumult over Islamic port deals and Katrina video capers is the recently released — and willfully ignored — Barrett Report. David Barrett, you'll recall, is the independent counsel appointed in 1995 to investigate allegations of impropriety against President Clinton's Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros.
The Final Report is available here, but parts of it have been redacted due to a court order.
Clinton hypocrisy: Abuse of power in pursuing opponents. Return with me now to January, 2006, when the 684-page Barrett Report was published minus 120 pages which held, by all insider accounts, enough evidence not only to sink Mrs. Clinton's presidential ship but to put her and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, in the courtroom dock. The pages were redacted in a desperate rider attached to an unrelated bill by Sen. John Kerry and two Democratic colleagues and buried in a congressional vault.
Independent Counsel's Press Release Concerning Release of the Final Report. After a thorough reading of the Report it would not be unreasonable to conclude as I have that there was a coverup at high levels of our government and, it appears to have been substantial and coordinated. The question is why? And that question regrettably will go unanswered. Unlike some other coverups, this one succeeded.
The public needs to see the Barrett report. [Sen. Byron Dorgan], along with several crafty Democrats, has been attempting to deny the public the contents of an Independent Counsel's report that is believed to contain evidence of serious corruption and misuse of the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department back in the Clinton Administration. In this cover-up the Democrats have had assistance from a few dubious Republicans. It is time to let the public see this report.
Publish the Barrett report now. At issue was the publication of a report by David Barrett, an independent counsel who has spent the better part of a decade looking into some of the most hair-raising allegations of presidential malfeasance in American history.
Protecting the IRS: The political significance is that the Barrett report's shocking allegations of high-level corruption in the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department are likely to be concealed from the public and from Congress. A recently passed appropriations bill, intended to permit release of this report, was altered behind closed doors to ensure that its politically combustible elements never saw the light of day.
Hiding Barrett. In a very clever year-end column the venerable William Safire writing in the New York Times asks whether "special prosecutor David Barrett's 400-page expose of political influence within the Internal Revenue Service and the Clinton Justice Department" will be the government report "most likely to resist investigative reporting" this year. I certainly hope not.
Report implicating Clinton: Will it be hidden for good? Though it has had scant attention from the mainstream media, a bipartisan effort to squelch an independent counsel's final report on Clinton-era abuse of the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department has gotten the attention of Web activists and commentators, causing a growing call for the release of the document that is said to including damning evidence against the 42nd president and his administration.
Uh-oh...
Imminent Independent Counsel Report Gets Sliced Up. [Independent counsel David] Barrett and others say, thanks to an amendment to the November judiciary appropriations bill, key elements in the final report, which was completed in August 2004 and has been sitting with a three-judge panel at the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. ever since, may be heavily redacted before its release.
The Barrett report: The long-awaited final report by Independent Counsel David Barrett, to be released today [Thursday 1/19/2006], was severely censored by court order but not enough to sufficiently obscure its importance. As long forecast, it alleges serious corruption in the Clinton administration's Justice Department and Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The question is what was contained in 120 pages removed by the judges.
If GOP Runs a RINO for President, The Party Will Crash and Burn. I know many fear the FBI, CIA, NSA and Homeland Security Department and they have concerns about surveillance and civil liberties. But I am more concerned about the Internal Revenue Service, an agency that can lock up an American for decades because he or she didn't fork over their hard earned money. If the President — any president — uses the IRS, which has more leeway than all the other agencies put together, to investigate, intimidate and perhaps incarcerate Americans, I for one want to know about it. But I'm not holding my breath for the Republicans to demand the full Barrett Report be released without redaction.
Criticism of MADD
I don't drink, and I would never encourage intoxicated people to drive, but I've recently found that the seemingly harmless organization MADD is apparently barking up the wrong tree, working on problems unrelated to drunk driving.
This Way Lies MADDness. It's becoming clearer, with each appointment President Obama makes, that his agenda is a simple one: control. The latest example is the naming of Chuck Hurley as the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Hurley is currently the CEO of Mothers Against Drunk Driving. While it's encouraging that a group with "Mothers" in its name would allow a man to be its CEO, that brief amusement is dwarfed by the realization of just what MADD has become: a profound exemplar of the "nanny state" mentality.
Mothers Against Drunk Driving. MADD has managed to artificially enlarge the societal problem of drunk driving by continuously expanding the parameters of the "drinking driving problem." Even though the real drunk driving problem has been reduced to a relatively small group of incorrigible "hard-core" offenders, MADD continues to intensify its focus on responsible adults. The reason is simple: MADD has essentially become a public relations organization, and PR campaigns only work on responsible adults; product abusers are not affected by slogans and red ribbon campaigns. So MADD ignores the truly drunk drivers who cause an overwhelming majority of the deaths, and instead goes after social drinkers with massive PR scare campaigns.
MADD warns off foe of illegal aliens. Michelle Dallacroce was hopping mad when she received a letter from Mothers Against Drunk Driving demanding she change the name of her organization, Mothers Against Illegal Aliens. "I couldn't believe it," Mrs. Dallacroce said. "I don't know who would be confused by this. We don't even have the same acronym." Mrs. Dallacroce, ... received a certified letter Oct. 10 stating that MADD owns the rights to the name "Mothers Against" and giving her 10 days to stop using it.
The Caroline Kennedy subsection
The people who denigrated the Bush father-and-son team in the White House as a "dynasty" are bent on keeping someone from the Kennedy family in a prominent office permanently.
A Senate Seat Is Not a Kennedy Heirloom. Have New York Democrats lost all self-respect? Their excited talk of whether Caroline Kennedy is "interested" in Hillary Clinton's Senate seat makes you wonder. The late John F. Kennedy's daughter has made at least one feeler phone call to New York Gov. David Paterson. And Uncle Teddy, the Massachusetts senator, is busy pulling the levers to slip her in. The seat will be vacant upon Clinton's confirmation as secretary of state.
The magic name 'Kennedy' is not enough. For the past 55 years, with a brief hiatus while Ted Kennedy ran for the seat vacated by his brother, the president, there has been a member of the Kennedy family in the U.S. Senate. With Ted Kennedy, 76 and ailing from brain cancer, that particular dynasty seemed fated to come to an honorable end. But with Hillary Rodham Clinton's nomination to be secretary of State, there was the prospect of an open Senate seat that New York's Democratic governor, David Paterson, has sole authority to fill.
New York Deserves A Qualified Senator. Is Democratic New York Gov. David Paterson his own man? If he is, he'll appoint an accomplished leader as senator. If he isn't, he'll kowtow to the party bosses and pick ... a Kennedy.
The Kennedy Entitlement: Media reaction to news that Caroline Kennedy is actively seeking appointment to the U.S. Senate seat held by Hillary Clinton was certainly different from how the media responded to Sarah Palin's arrival on the national stage. Mrs. Palin may have been a mayor, chairwoman of a major state regulatory commission and a governor, but her entrance into big-time politics was widely ridiculed. In contrast, the 51-year-old Ms. Kennedy is a shy and private person who has never held a job in public life beyond her 22 months planning strategic partnerships for New York City's public schools.
Sweet Caroline. "She's not qualified," some say. Was Hillary Clinton qualified when she ran for the seat? Sen. Clinton had never served in elective office, either. And what "qualifies" one to be a member of Congress? Sweetheart deals on loans? Men like Ted Stevens of Alaska and the 91-year-old Robert Byrd are the twin peaks of pork. Has their behavior "qualified" them to be in the Senate?
The demise of the Republic? Caroline Kennedy has asked New York's Democratic Governor David Paterson to appoint her to the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Hillary Rodham Clinton. Kennedy, who has never run for office, would have to run and win in 2010 to finish out the last two years of Clinton's term, and run again in 2012 to win a term of her own. David Corbin, associate professor of politics at The King's College in New York, says if Kennedy is appointed it would be a sign that "something's wrong with the Republic."
This isn't her father's Camelot. Don't expect other politicians to swoon just because she wants to be a senator. Hey, this is New York — and Cuomos and Clintons are in the mix.
Getting Beyond Camelot. Caroline Kennedy is, by all accounts, a smart, decent and very capable woman. There is no reason why she shouldn't enter politics and why she couldn't have a good shot at winning an election. That doesn't mean she should be handed Hillary Clinton's soon-to-be-vacated United States Senate seat.
Kennedy faces a bit of resentment in N.Y.. One thing didn't change this week during Kennedy's first day on the road. She gave a 30-second statement after pitching her credentials to Syracuse officials, then reporters asked what her credentials were. Before she could answer, an aide whisked her away. "Hopefully, I can come back and answer all those questions," she said. Then she sped away in an SUV.
Cinderella vs. the Barracuda: [Governor] Palin's selection triggered troughs of bile, vomited up from nearly every respectable liberal quarter. A Florida congressman, and Obama surrogate, insinuated that Palin was a "Nazi sympathizer" and anti-Semite (she's not, but Caroline Kennedy's grandfather was). Her by-the-bootstraps story was ridiculed by nearly every ex-debutante newsreader and avowed "feminist" in America. Meanwhile, Caroline, with a resume perfectly suited to being a Kennedy and little else, is a Cinderella who deserves a Senate seat because, well, she just does.
If Caroline's Last Name Was Palin: What has she done in her career? Does she have the experience to govern? Isn't she just a name and a pretty face in expensive clothes? All questions asked by Democrats (I'm being nice) regarding Sarah Palin as McCain's pick for Vice President. But Caroline Kennedy — similarly an intriguing, attractive outsider decked in designer duds and a thin resume — isn't put under the same kind of scrutiny.
Caroline Kennedy is no Sarah Palin. Suddenly, after a lifetime shunning publicity — one of her charms — Kennedy is a likely U.S. senator solely on the basis of having decided that she'd like that quite a lot. ... The real rub is that she hasn't earned it. The sense of entitlement implicit in Kennedy's plea for appointment mocks our national narrative. We honor rags-to-riches, but riches-to-riches animates our revolutionary spirit.
Desperately Seeking Caroline. The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton's New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times. Consider aristocratic entitlement. Ms. Kennedy apparently spends a great deal of her time divided between her Park Avenue Upper-East-Side Manhattan townhouse and her hereditary estate on Martha's Vineyard. She has had no real experience with the ordinary lives of New Yorkers ... Ms. Kennedy has never run for, or held, public office. Her only prerequisites for Senator are her pedigree from her father and her purported celebrity mystique passed on from her mother Jackie.
Remember, Gov. Paterson, it's up to you, not the Kennedy PR machine. Al Sharpton strode out of Sylvia's Restaurant in Harlem on Thursday into a throng of breathless reporters. He had a big fat smile on his face and a slender, slightly startled Caroline Kennedy, heiress of Camelot, at his side. The reason for this most odd pairing was the quest for the U.S. Senate seat Hillary Clinton will soon vacate. Kennedy, a woman who has never held elected office in her life, has suddenly decided she wants the seat.
The Editor says...
Why not let Al Sharpton himself have the seat? Is "affirmative action" only for insignificant jobs?
Caroline Kennedy 'Dismayed' by Her Own Voting Record. Caroline Kennedy said she was "surprised and dismayed" by her own voting record, after failing to cast her pick for the very Senate seat she now hopes to take over.
Caroline Kennedy: Pampered wannabe pol plays the victim card. Forget the Profiles in Courage award. For this interview yesterday Caroline Kennedy deserves the Profiles in Chutzpah Award. See, JFK's only surviving child wants Hillary Clinton's seat in the U.S. Senate, although she has absolutely no qualifications for the position other than her last name, which by the way used to be Schlossberg until last summer.
Inherit the What? Seventy-six years ago, in 1932, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. gave a timely endorsement to Franklin D. Roosevelt, and, as a reward, was appointed chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (and later ambassador to the Court of St. James), from which perch he launched the political careers of his sons. In 2008, his granddaughter Caroline gave a timely endorsement to Barack Obama, and now that he's elevated his rival Hillary Clinton from her Senate seat to his cabinet, Caroline is claiming that seat for herself in an effort to revive and extend her family's political presence, which in light of the age and illness of Uncle Ted seems to be fading away.
Say goodnight, Caroline. In the beginning, just three long weeks ago, the idea of Caroline Kennedy being a United States senator had a certain ring to it. The Camelot myth still has shelf life and a merger with the historic Obama presidency provided an intriguing story line. Kennedy would replace Hillary Clinton, one leading lady following another on a stage where name recognition often substitutes for merit. The narrative was tailor-made for the fever chambers of celebrity-obsessed media and the bandwagon quickly picked up speed. ... But a strange thing is happening on the way to the coronation. The wheels of the bandwagon are coming off. Fantasy is giving way to inescapable truth.
Caroline Kennedy's Fractured Fairytale. Once upon a time in a land far, far away, there was the beautiful Princess Caroline who was part of one of the oldest royal families in the country — a family that built its fortune on Hollywood investments and possibly bootlegging, and was plagued with tragedy and scandal — but whose over-glorified name still held many in its hypnotic thrall. Yet Princess Caroline, despite her royal pedigree and family tradition of publicly serving themselves — er, tradition of public service — chose to live her life quietly, eschewing publicity.
Caroline Kennedy draws criticism after latest tour. Caroline Kennedy's second act as a Senate hopeful didn't get much better reviews from New York's press than her first. A New York Daily News columnist said "the wheels of the bandwagon are coming off." New York Post State Editor Fred Dicker already put her on his list of 2008 losers.
More money than brains.
Caroline Kennedy repeats 'you know' 142 times in interview. Explaining why she would be a good Senator, she said: "So I think in many ways, you know, we want to have all kinds of different voices, you know, representing us, and I think what I bring to it is, you know, my experience as a mother, as a woman, as a lawyer, you know, I've been an education activist for the last six years here, and, you know, I've written seven books — two on the Constitution, two on American politics. "So obviously, you know, we have different strengths and weaknesses."
Caroline's Crib. Forget Chappaqua. This amazing Martha's Vineyard spread will be the next home-away-from-the-Beltway for New York's junior senator if Caroline Kennedy is tapped to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton. The 366-acre estate — worth at least $50 million — just underwent a major renovation and rezoning that will keep it the exclusive province of Kennedy, 51.
Kennedy's 'you knows' become political fodder. Bloggers have torn into President John F. Kennedy's Harvard- and Columbia-educated daughter for such remarks as: "You know, I think, really, um, this is sort of a unique moment, both in our, you know, in our country's history and in, you know, my own life, and, um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges." The "you knows" have punctuated a rocky media rollout for the Democratic scion ... .
Caroline Kennedy botches debut interview with 'you know' attitude. During a series of meetings with the New York press, one of which was recorded and is now being admired on YouTube in all its ineloquent awkwardness, the daughter of President Kennedy was vague, unconvincing and displayed a potentially ruinous verbal tic. In one sequence, lasting 2 minutes and 27 seconds, Ms Kennedy, 51, revealed that she had inherited none of the eloquence, energy or charisma associated with other members of America's foremost political dynasty: she used the phrase "you know" no fewer than 30 times.
Caroline Kennedy fails to impress. Asked if President George W Bush's tax cuts on the wealthy should be repealed immediately, Ms Kennedy replied: "Well, you know, that's something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know, were expiring and needed to be repealed," the paper [New York Daily News] reported.
Caroline Kennedy: In theory senators represent the people of the state that sent them to Washington. It's not at all clear what that means. It has something to do with serving the interests of those people rather than the senator's own interests. But it's long been debated whether a representative should do what constituents want or what the representative thinks they should want. Either way we have a problem.
Kennedy hasn't earned N.Y. seat. Caroline Kennedy, a woman who has spent her entire life avoiding politics, has thrown her hat into the ring for Hillary Clinton's Senate seat. But apart from being an outspoken advocate for Barack Obama, her credentials don't seem up to par. And "credentials" was certainly the magic word this year. Obama and Sarah Palin were pushed up against the ropes time and time again, defending their qualifications.
Kennedy Was Spared Financial Disclosure as a Top Aide at City Schools. Like it or not, roughly 7,000 employees of New York City file 32-page disclosure forms each year divulging personal information about their family finances in an effort to bolster confidence in open government. But when Caroline Kennedy was employed by the city Department of Education from 2002 to 2004, as the chief executive of the Office of Strategic Partnerships, she was not required to file, even though two people who worked for her had to disclose information about their finances.
Northeast Public Radio CEO Makes Unintentionally Hilarious Case for Caroline Kennedy. The most important thing to remember when reading this Berkshire Eagle article, "Making the case for Caroline Kennedy," by WAMC Northeast Public Radio CEO, Alan Chartock, is that it was not meant as satire. However, Chartock's reasons for appointing Caroline Kennedy as senator from New York come off as absolutely hilarious even though he is trying to be completely serious.
End of the Kennedy dynasty as Caroline's Senate bid fails. "Enough!" decided Governor David Paterson, according to "The New York Post". After a Palinesque series of train wreck interviews, Hillaryesque citations of a "lifetime of experience" and a Ted Kennedyesque failure to provide a rationale for being elected beyond the family name, the New York governor apparently concluded that Caroline was a no go for the Senate.
Caroline's Kaput. Caroline Kennedy last night [1/21/2009] withdrew from consideration to replace Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, just two months after rocking the New York political landscape by throwing her hat in the ring.
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