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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
LIBERALS AREN'T FUNNY, THEY'RE A RIOT!
Post Date: 2011-08-18 16:04:44 by CZ82
2 Comments
LIBERALS AREN'T FUNNY, THEY'RE A RIOT! August 17, 2011 Like you, I've been horrified by the eruptions of mob violence around the globe this summer. But having spent the last two years researching and writing a book about mobs, I'm also grateful to the ruffians for taking to the streets so soon after my book was released. Thanks, you dirty animals. I knew you wouldn't let me down. When I decided to write about mobs, it was a relatively peaceful period. But as long as there is evil in the world, mobs will never be finally defeated. And as long as there are liberals, there will be some people stoking the mobs. It was only a matter of time, although even I didn't ...
David Stockman: GOP Candidates “Checked Out of Reality”
Post Date: 2011-08-18 12:05:02 by Brian S
8 Comments
Former Michigan Congressman and former Reagan official David Stockman is a vocal critic of President Obama's Keynesian policies but he's also not very pleased with his GOP cohorts running for the White House. As he details in the accompanying interview with Aaron Task, Stockman believes the Republicans are off base in their refusal to even discuss the notion of higher taxes at a time when the government faces an insurmountable debt burden. "I think it's absurd. It is willful ignorance of the facts of life." At the Iowa GOP debates last week all candidates in attendance said they would reject any debt reduction compromise featuring a 10 to 1 ratio of spending cuts to ...
Crashing the Tea Party
Post Date: 2011-08-17 13:24:52 by go65
5 Comments
GIVEN how much sway the Tea Party has among Republicans in Congress and those seeking the Republican presidential nomination, one might think the Tea Party is redefining mainstream American politics. But in fact the Tea Party is increasingly swimming against the tide of public opinion: among most Americans, even before the furor over the debt limit, its brand was becoming toxic. To embrace the Tea Party carries great political risk for Republicans, but perhaps not for the reason you might think. Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a ...
Us Moral Authority Undercut By War On Terror
Post Date: 2011-08-17 12:13:30 by Brian S
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The 9/11 attacks prompted an outpouring of international sympathy and support for the United States, but Washington's subsequent "war on terror" undercut the superpower's moral authority. Ten years later, analysts say, America has not fully recovered its standing as a steadfast defender of liberty and fierce protector of the rule of law, handing Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda at least a partial victory. Critics accused president George W. Bush of riding roughshod over civil liberties, signing off on torture, extraordinary rendition and warrantless surveillance as he waged his "war on terror" no matter what the cost. Sweeping into office in January 2009 on a ...
How Safe Are You? What Almost $8 Trillion In National Security Spending Bought You...
Post Date: 2011-08-16 20:00:43 by Brian S
1 Comments
The killing of Osama Bin Laden did not put cuts in national security spending on the table, but the debt-ceiling debate finally did. And mild as those projected cuts might have been, last week newly minted Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was already digging in his heels and decrying the modest potential cost-cutting plans as a "doomsday mechanism” for the military. Pentagon allies on Capitol Hill were similarly raising the alarm as they moved forward with this year’s even larger military budget. None of this should surprise you. As with all addictions, once you’re hooked on massive military spending, it’s hard to think realistically or ask the ...
Straw Poll Winner - Obama
Post Date: 2011-08-16 19:53:08 by Brian S
2 Comments
Ames, Iowa - Strolling through the pageant of unhealthy food and unsound ideology that is the Iowa Straw Poll, amid the good-natured Republicans who swept Michele Bachmann to an impressive victory, I couldn't help but reflect that this quadrennial exercise is one crazy way to pick a major-party candidate for president. You'll note that I used the words "Michele Bachmann" and "president" in the same sentence. That someone with views as extreme as Bachmann's could win -- and that Ron Paul, who seems to inhabit his own little reality, could finish second -- would seem to rob the straw poll of all but comic value, making it analogous to the opening joke a dinner ...
Buchanan: Mitt's Dilemma
Post Date: 2011-08-16 11:18:02 by Brian S
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Last week's Republican debate at Ames, Iowa, and the straw poll Saturday did more than sort out the Republican field for 2012. They have given the nation a good close look at a Republican Party that no longer resembles the Bush-McCain model. Consider. Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul, who garnered nearly 60 percent of the votes cast, were both among the two dozen House members who voted against the final bipartisan deal to raise the debt ceiling. Neither blanched at shutting down the U.S. government. At the debate, every Republican onstage raised his or her hand when asked whether he or she would reject a budget deal in which $10 in spending cuts were offered for every dollar in higher ...
Screw The Rich (Here’s How)
Post Date: 2011-08-16 07:20:14 by A K A Stone
15 Comments
Tax the rich. Those bastards.
I get why people who aren’t rich hate those that are. No one really cares what they have, they only care what they have relative to others. When there is inequality, and there always is, even the hyper intelligent call for a redistribution of wealth. It’s an enduring longing for us as a species, and no evidence to the contrary will convince people it just doesn’t work in any large group.
What I really didn’t understand until recently though is why so many rich Americans seem to loathe their richness as much as everyone else does. Many in Silicon Valley want to tax the rich into the middle class and let government spend and spend and spend. The super rich ...
ADL Tightens 'Domestic Terrorist' Noose Around Christians
Post Date: 2011-08-15 17:09:33 by Brian S
2 Comments
In attempting to end free speech and criminalize Christians, the Anti-Defamation League (architect of hate laws worldwide) is promoting two contradictory agendas. First, it warns Congress that Islam is highly vulnerable to extreme interpretation by Muslim terrorists. At the same time it derides “Islamophobe” Christians for fearing Islam and Sharia law! ADL characterizes anti-Jihadist evangelicals (even if they are staunchly pro-Israel) as “haters,” whose inflammatory criticism of Islam inspires anti-Islamic terrorists like Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Why ADL's conceptual schizophrenia?To pass Christian-persecuting “anti-terrorist” laws, ...
Americans Don't Realize Just How Badly We're Getting Screwed by the Top 0.1 Percent Hoarding the Country's Wealth
Post Date: 2011-08-15 14:12:52 by Brian S
7 Comments
With an unprecedented sum of wealth, tens of trillions of dollars, held within the top one-tenth of one percent of the US population, we now have the most severe inequality of wealth in US history. Not even the robber barons of the Gilded Age were as greedy as the modern-day economic elite. As American philosopher John Dewey said, “There is no such thing as the liberty or effective power of an individual, group, or class, except in relation to the liberties, the effective powers, of other individuals, groups or classes.”In my report, The Economic Elite vs. the People, I reported on the strategic withholding of wealth from 99 percent of the US population over ...
Bachmann-Perry Overdrive
Post Date: 2011-08-15 13:47:07 by go65
1 Comments
The fight for the Republican Presidential nomination is finally getting underway in earnest, with Texas Governor Rick Perry bull-riding his way into the race and Michele Bachmann winning Saturday's straw poll in Iowa. Both events show how unsettled the GOP contest still is, as voters search for a candidate who can beat a vulnerable President Obama. Mrs. Bachmann, the Minnesota Congresswoman, has emerged from cable-TV land in recent months to be a viable competitor. She is telegenic, a hard worker, and has planted herself at the front of the tea party parade in hostility to all things Washington. This posture matches the current public mood and helps to explain why she surpassed fellow ...
Why "business needs certainty" is destructive
Post Date: 2011-08-15 12:15:36 by lucysmom
13 Comments
If you read the business and even the political press, you've doubtless encountered the claim that the economy is a mess because the threat to reregulate in the wake of a global-economy-wrecking financial crisis is creating "uncertainty." That is touted as the reason why corporations are sitting on their hands and not doing much in the way of hiring and investing. This is propaganda that needs to be laughed out of the room. I approach this issue as as a business practitioner. I have spent decades advising major financial institutions, private equity and hedge funds, and very wealthy individuals (Forbes 400 level) on enterprises they own. I've run a profit center in a ...
America's Debt is Not Its Biggest Problem
Post Date: 2011-08-15 00:02:46 by go65
3 Comments
The debt crisis as it crests ultimately gives way to these growth-inhibiting, spending-contractionary secular forces. Having run up our credit card to keep on spending, we have reached market-enforced limits that force deleveraging. It is not the debt, however, but the lack of global aggregate demand that is at the heart of the crisis. As the entire world strives to put its own people to work before other nations do, policymakers constructively lower interest rates and delay sovereign, corporate and household defaults to provide breathing room. Fiscally, however, an anti-Keynesian, budget-balancing immediacy imparts a constrictive noose around whatever demand remains alive and kicking. ...
Once A Fringe Candidate, Paul Shaping 2012 Race
Post Date: 2011-08-14 18:33:02 by Brian S
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Ron Paul, once seen as a fringe candidate and a nuisance to the establishment, is shaping the 2012 Republican primary by giving voice to the party's libertarian wing and reflecting frustration with the United States' international entanglements. The Texas congressman placed second in a key early test vote Saturday in Ames, coming within 152 votes of winning the first significant balloting of the Republican nominating contest. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota won the nonbinding Iowa straw poll, but Paul's organizational strength and a retooled focus on social issues set him up to be a serious player in the campaign. "I believe in a very limited role for government. But ...
Does Israel Teach Anti-Arab Bigotry?
Post Date: 2011-08-14 16:07:06 by Brian S
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Israel is experiencing a protest movement for “social justice” as are other countries in the Middle East and Europe. But the Israeli version seeks a more equitable society for Jewish citizens while sidestepping the plight of Palestinians, what Lawrence Davidson sees as the result of intense anti-Arab indoctrination. By Lawrence Davidson Over the last ten years, there have been periodic outbursts of rage over the alleged anti-Semitic nature of Palestinian textbooks. Most of these episodes have been instigated by an Israeli-based organization called the Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace (aka, the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School ...
Let The Fight For The Right Begin
Post Date: 2011-08-14 14:50:18 by Brian S
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Technically, the margin of victory for Michele Bachmann at Saturday's Iowa straw poll was slight, with second-place finisher Ron Paul falling just 152 votes (or 0.9 percentage points) short of her tally. But everyone knows that Paul is a niche candidate. The 27.65 percent that he earned on Saturday is impressive, in that it speaks to the sizable and devoted following he has built, but it's also probably the same share he would have received if there'd only been two candidates on the ballot, instead of nine. Bachmann's real competition was Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor who had poured massive time and energy into the straw poll, hoping to post a ...
They Who Live by the Race Card Die by the Race Card
Post Date: 2011-08-13 09:15:21 by CZ82
4 Comments
They Who Live by the Race Card Die by the Race Card By Lloyd Marcus Due to Obama's declining poll numbers, Democrat tongues loosened by cocktails at parties are quietly suggesting, "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could primary Obama out with Hillary? Darn it, we can't because Obama is black!" I say, "Hallelujah -- a perfect example of divine justice." They who live by the race card die by the race card. Almost three years ago, the Democrats offered their equivalent of a Trojan Horse to America in the form of a shiny, new, extremely well-crafted, beautiful black man. Its mega-internal speakers broadcast a hypnotic message, heavily reverbed to create a ...
German Example Shows Way Out of Debt Crisis; Why the US Should Raise Taxes
Post Date: 2011-08-12 20:39:19 by Brian S
3 Comments
A Commentary by Peter Bofinger AFP A collapsed bridge in Minneapolis (2007 photo): The US already spends less than average on infrastructure. Almost all the industrialized economies are struggling under the weight of enormous debt levels. The problem is their government revenues are too low. Debt-ridden countries like the United States, Ireland and Japan need to raise their taxes to a similar level to Germany. The global economic and financial crisis has led to a dramatic increase in government debt in recent years. Within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), member countries' average debt ratio -- i.e., public debt relative to economic output -- ...
Tea Party Terrorists? No -- Worse
Post Date: 2011-08-12 20:33:43 by Brian S
27 Comments
I have to agree with the tea party advocate who wrote complaining that his movement, and sometimes the Republicans in general, have been recently linked to the word "terrorist" ("Why the name calling?" Aug. 10). I know from personal experience this is wildly inaccurate. As a resident of New York City on 9/11, I watched in horror as real terrorists attacked my own city and killed nearly 3,000 of my neighbors, including the father of one of my youngest daughter's 10th grade classmates. Despite that horror, as a city, we picked ourselves up and stood up unbeaten and unbowed by the worst terrorists can do. Because the truth is simple terrorists will never stop ...
Wisconsin's Warning to Union Busters
Post Date: 2011-08-12 08:54:13 by go65
2 Comments
Five months after Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin pushed through a law stripping public unions of their bargaining rights, the Republican Party has paid a price. Two of the state senators who backed the law were thrown out of office by voters on Tuesday and replaced with Democrats. Mr. Walker’s opponents did not succeed in turning over the Senate, but it was still an impressive response to the governor’s arrogant overreach. Related News Analysis: In Wisconsin, a Big Recall Push Comes Up Short (August 11, 2011) Recall elections are extremely difficult to win; only two had succeeded in the state in the last 80 years. The districts lean Republican, and getting people to turn out in ...
The Case for Republican Economic Sabotage
Post Date: 2011-08-11 17:00:43 by Brian S
2 Comments
With a few exceptions, tea party events have always appeared less like protest rallies and more like Sunday evening lawn concerts, with attendees lounging in lawn chairs waving tiny flags -- not unlike a Lee Greenwood "unplugged" festival at the local Yickadoo Amphitheater and Flea Market. But with tea party attendance declining, the leisurely, almost bucolic atmosphere of the tea party gatherings has become increasingly lackadaisical. Until, that is, the other day when one of the Tea Party Express performers mentioned that the Standard & Poor's credit downgrade was being blamed on the tea party wing of the Republican Party. The crowd loved it. Perhaps they simply ...
Tea Party Terminators
Post Date: 2011-08-11 14:45:45 by Brian S
6 Comments
Towards the beginning of the original Terminator film, Kyle Reese, who has come back to the past to save Sarah Connor - whose spawn will save mankind - lets her know what she's facing in her new cybernetic stalker. "Listen, and understand. That terminator is out there. It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead." Substitute "Tea Party" for "Terminator" and "U.S. Government" for "you," and with the exception of "fear" (which I'd argue is what drives them), this pretty much sums up the story of the 60 ...
Can Bachmann Count?
Post Date: 2011-08-11 14:18:38 by go65
0 Comments
Will Iowa voters challenge Michele Bachmann to clarify her incoherent fiscal views? On the one hand, she adamantly opposed raising the debt ceiling and is now demanding a balanced budget this year. On the other hand, she voted for the Ryan Budget. That plan proposed running big budget deficits for decades (even under the rosiest economic assumptions – like 2.8% unemployment rate). Its implementation would require a total increase of the debt ceiling at least several times greater than the one that just passed (against strong opposition from Bachmann). Can these two positions be reconciled? Inquiring minds want to know.
A Bank That Can Get Americans on the Road and on the Job: View
Post Date: 2011-08-11 09:14:19 by buckeroo
1 Comments
Among the legion of problems facing the U.S., two stand out: Unemployment remains appallingly high, and the public works undergirding our economy are in alarmingly bad shape. Creating a national infrastructure bank presents a harmonized solution to these two problems that should be feasible even in austere times. Airports and transportation networks, levees and dams, water and energy systems are deteriorating. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that 25 percent of our bridges are deficient, 7 billion gallons of clean water are wasted each day because of leaking pipes, and a third of our major roads are in poor or mediocre condition. The costs of all this to U.S. businesses -- ...
Republicans’ No-Tax Stand Unsupported by History or Facts: View
Post Date: 2011-08-11 09:10:00 by lucysmom
12 Comments
Whatever one thinks of the validity of Standard & Poor’s decision to downgrade U.S. debt, it contained an admonition that we should take seriously: Spending cuts alone won’t be sufficient to place the debt, and by extension, the economy, on a sustainable path. In a memo to his Republican colleagues, Cantor warned that S&P’s analysis put the party under “pressure to compromise on tax increases” on the ground that there is “no other way forward.” His response: “I respectfully disagree.” As always, the Republican leaders justified their intransigence by invoking the demons of job-killing taxes that would suppress the dynamism of overtaxed ...
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