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Latest Articles: Opinions/Editorials
The Economics of Libertarianism, Revealed
Post Date: 2010-06-16 09:31:57 by go65
0 Comments
It is both the best and worst of times for libertarians. On the plus side, real, live politicians who might conceivably get elected call themselves libertarians. On the negative side, true libertarians have lost their ancient luxury of being able to avoid any responsibility for the gaffes and errors of political leaders. Libertarianism rests on two bedrock beliefs: human freedom is a great good and the public sector tends to screw things up. The first belief is based more on faith than empirical result; the second derives from millennia of human experience. The increased appeal of libertarianism today reflects a nonpartisan view that the public sector has been deeply problematic under ...
Will Republicans Miss Opportunity?
Post Date: 2010-06-15 15:17:38 by Brian S
1 Comments
Can there be a more fortunate politician on Earth than Nevada Sen. Harry Reid? The Senate majority leader has seen his popularity plunge in the Silver State. He led the fight for the health care bill, opposed by a majority of Nevada citizens, according to state polls. Reid also had his fingerprints all over the bailouts. In a time when insider politicians are under fire, Reid is the ultimate insider. But he may yet get re-elected. Republican Party leaders in the state had backed a candidate they felt confident would easily defeat Reid — former state party chairwoman Sue Lowden. She had the political connections to run a strong, statewide campaign. Lowden is a solid conservative, but ...
The Drudge factor
Post Date: 2010-06-15 09:35:25 by Badeye
3 Comments
The Drudge factor By Brent Budowsky - 06/14/10 06:49 PM ET In the latest debate about Matt Drudge, Mark Halperin of Time magazine suggests that Drudge appeals to racism among a portion of his readers. I often agree with Halperin, but he misses the point. Drudge does not appeal to racism. This is wrong about Drudge and insulting to his readers, and diverts attention from the big question: With so many wealthy liberals and Democrats, with Democrats controlling the presidency and Congress, and with Hollywood and New York full of brilliant, wealthy liberal stars and moguls, why does the right have such a media lead over the left? Drudge is no different from elements of the press since ...
A Gusher of Light Sweet Terror
Post Date: 2010-06-14 19:22:13 by Brian S
4 Comments
“We need to be realistic about operating in a mile of water” Tony Hayward, the cherubic little weasel who serves as the front man for British Petroleum, BP, Beyond Pathetic or whatever they are calling their ‘brand’ this week, made the statement above, on camera to reporters while standing on an oil fouled Louisiana beach a couple of weeks ago. Earlier that day I had a fairly heated argument with an elderly acquaintance who recently became enraptured by the ‘Teabaggers.’ This giddy political infatuation has had the gruesome effect of making him more of a pain in the ass than he was previously. At one point in the ‘discussion’ he asked me why BP was ...
Crimes by Israel, Sanctions for Iran
Post Date: 2010-06-14 15:19:02 by Brian S
3 Comments
The Iranian nation is not unfamiliar with the double standards of the superpowers anymore. The history of Iran's relations with the western and eastern superpowers is filled with deceitfulness, dishonesty and fraudulence. The recent U.S.-proposed, Russia-backed United Nations Security Council resolution against Iran over its nuclear program is simply one example out of hundreds of instances which demonstrate that the big powers have not ever been honest and sincere with Iran.
While the international community is witness to the flagrant, ceaseless and unrelenting felonies of the illegitimate regime of Israel in the occupied territories of Gaza and West Bank, United Nations Security ...
Is The Tea Party Over?
Post Date: 2010-06-14 15:06:58 by Brian S
20 Comments
Is the tea party movement already weak tea? Has the anti-government, anti-Obama movement already peaked? A new ABC-Washington Post poll shows that half of Americans now view the tea party unfavorably. Besides that, its political endorsements have not turned out as well as many had hoped. In Nevada, tea party members are fussing and finger-pointing over the election of Sharron Angle as the GOP nominee to face Harry Reid. Some are pointing out the obvious: Angle, a former state legislator with fringe views, isn’t the strongest candidate against Reid. In Virginia, tea partiers put forward so many candidates for congressional seats that establishment-backed candidates won the nomination. ...
Helen Thomas, Turkey, and the Liberation of Israel
Post Date: 2010-06-11 12:58:21 by Badeye
1 Comments
Helen Thomas, Turkey, and the Liberation of Israel The world cares deeply about refugees, disputed territory, and divided cities — when Israel is involved. Otherwise, otherwise. It is hard to become much more influential than the doyen of the White House press corps, who is given a ceremonial front-rows seat at press briefings and press conferences. So when Helen Thomas suggested that the Israelis should leave their country and “go home” to Poland and Germany, this was not some obscure, eccentric anti-Semite, but a liberal insider who has come to enjoy iconic status and a sense of exemption from criticism. Note that Ms. Thomas did not call for just a West Bank free of ...
Calif. GOP primary winners look headed for defeat
Post Date: 2010-06-10 09:35:01 by go65
2 Comments
The good news for Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina here in California was that they won their Republican primaries. The bad news was that they had to run in Republican primaries. Whitman, now the GOP nominee for governor, and Fiorina, the GOP nominee for senator, dispatched their nearest primary rivals by margins of better than 2 to 1. Each spent a queen's ransom to do so -- in Whitman's case, close to $80 million of her own money -- but both former CEOs have plenty left over to take on their Democratic opponents this fall: in Whitman's case, Jerry Brown, the once and, he hopes, future governor; in Fiorina's case, incumbent Sen. Barbara Boxer. But California Republican ...
Helen Thomas Is Out, But What About Others?
Post Date: 2010-06-08 10:22:34 by Badeye
28 Comments
Helen Thomas Is Out, But What About Others? By Judith Miller Published June 08, 2010 | FOXNews.com “Blessed are the peacemakers,” if you can find any in the Middle East. They seem to be in short supply these days. One place not to look is on the Gaza flotilla. According to a radio communication the IDF released over the weekend, when Israeli warships issued a calm, but forceful warning to the “peace” flotilla to change course from Gaza, which is under blockade, and head instead for the Israeli port of Ashdod, an unidentified man on one of the ships – it’s unclear whether he was on the now infamous Mavi Marmara -- replied, in English: “Go back to ...
Get Back to Africa
Post Date: 2010-06-08 09:50:46 by Badeye
2 Comments
Get Back to Africa by Mike Adams Author’s Note: The author would like to thank “Bob” who is really clever by Caucasian gentile standards. Left wing White House reporter Helen Thomas was recently forced to issue an apology to African American citizens. She stated bluntly, in front of a live microphone, that blacks should “get the hell out of America.” Thomas is a longtime White House correspondent who writes a column for Hearst newspapers. She made the comments on May 27th after a White House African American History event. Thomas was asked by a black reporter if she had “any comments on African Americans.” She replied, “Tell them to get the ...
Tea Party Drowning In Sea Of Hypocrisy
Post Date: 2010-06-07 11:58:10 by Brian S
1 Comments
I'm done trying to hack through the tea party thicket of self-contradiction, self-delusion and self-serving positions. My last straw is Rand Paul, a tea party favorite and now Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky. What damns Paul wasn't the flap over his views on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Presumably, Paul isn't a racist. He's just a privileged white guy -- a doctor and son of 11-term congressman Ron Paul. What makes Rand Paul so exasperating is his crashing hypocrisy on Medicare. The hero to the cause of smaller government and balanced budgets vows not to touch Medicare -- the biggest and fastest-growing expense on the federal balance sheet. Rand's ...
Don't let Fannie and Freddie return to old neighborhood
Post Date: 2010-06-04 11:15:06 by Badeye
2 Comments
Our view on housing finance: Don't let Fannie and Freddie return to old neighborhood Updated 15h 11m ago As bailouts go, nothing quite matches the torrent of taxpayer money still pouring into Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing giants that now guarantee nearly half of the nation's $11.7 trillion in mortgages. To cover loans that go sour, the federal government has already doled out almost $145 billion, and the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates the final tab will be about $381 billion. That's about half the size of the 2008 bank bailout but, unlike that bailout, most of this money won't get paid back. And even now, there's little talk in ...
The Gaza Flotilla Attack Shows How Far Israel Has Declined
Post Date: 2010-06-03 19:28:58 by Brian S
6 Comments
No explanation can justify or whitewash the crime that was committed, and no excuse can explain away the stupid actions of the government and the army. Israel did not send its soldiers to kill civilians in cold blood; this is the last thing it wanted. Yet, a small Turkish organisation, fanatical in its religious views and radically hostile to Israel, recruited to its cause several hundred seekers of peace and justice, and managed to lure Israel into a trap, because it knew how Israel would react, knew how Israel is destined and compelled, like a puppet on a string, to react the way it did. How insecure, confused and panicky a country must be, to act as Israel acted! With a combination of ...
Time to Call the Tea Party's Bluff [Full Thread]
Post Date: 2010-06-03 09:52:42 by go65
57 Comments
I'm done trying to hack through the tea party thicket of self-contradiction, self-delusion and self- serving positions. My last straw is Rand Paul, a tea party favorite and now Republican nominee for senator from Kentucky. What damns Paul wasn't the flap over his views on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Presumably, Paul isn't a racist. He's just a privileged white guy -- a doctor and son of 11-term congressman Ron Paul -- who lacks feeling for America's tragic history of racism. What makes Rand Paul so exasperating is his crashing hypocrisy on Medicare. The hero to the cause of smaller government and balanced budgets also vows not to touch Medicare -- the biggest and ...
Is Gulf Disaster Spilling into Obama's Approval Ratings?
Post Date: 2010-06-03 09:47:35 by go65
22 Comments
We haven't written very much about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Needless to say, it's a real tragedy for people in the Gulf Coast states, a region which was hit hard both by the hurricanes of 2005 and by the economic hurricane that has hit the country over the past couple of years. I hope that those of you with means will consider spending some time down there. Without meaning to trivialize the situation, it does bear considering whether the incident is having any impact on Barack Obama's political fortunes. The hard evidence is mixed. This is Pollster.com's chart of Obama's approval ratings since the oil spill occurred. You can arguably see a point or two's ...
Of course, they were asking for it
Post Date: 2010-06-02 15:12:24 by Skip Intro
2 Comments
Of course, they were asking for it It's time the Israeli government's PR team made the most of its talents, and became available for hire. Then whenever a nutcase marched into a shopping mall in somewhere like Wisconsin and gunned down a selection of passers-by, they could be on hand to tell the world's press "The gunman regrets the loss of life but did all he could to avoid violence." Then various governments would issue statements saying "All we know is a man went berserk with an AK 47, and next to him there's a pile of corpses, so until we know the facts we can't pass judgement on what took place." To strengthen their case the Israelis have ...
Tina Fey Isn't Funny
Post Date: 2010-06-02 09:37:35 by Badeye
18 Comments
Tina Fey Isn't Funny By Aaron Goldstein on 6.2.10 @ 6:07AM Are they kidding? That was my first thought when I heard The Kennedy Center had named Tina Fey the 2010 recipient of the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor last week. Fey will receive the honor in Washington D.C. on November 9. The ceremony will subsequently be broadcast on PBS as it has been since 2000. The Mark Twain Prize was established in 1998 "to recognize those who create humor from their uniquely American experiences." Past recipients include Richard Pryor, Carl Reiner, Bob Newhart, Lily Tomlin and Saturday Night Live producer Lorne Michaels. In 2009, the award was bestowed upon Bill Cosby. The idea of ...
Israel Falls into the Trap
Post Date: 2010-05-31 13:13:08 by Brian S
5 Comments
Israel has sparked global outrage. At least 15 people were killed when the Israeli military stormed a flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists on Monday. In addition to being a human tragedy, it is also a political catastrophe for Israel. It has provided its critics around the world with fresh ammunition. The pro-Palestinian organizers had described the fleet with which they had hoped to break through the Israeli sea blockade of the Gaza Strip on Monday morning as a "humanitarian aid convoy." But as the Israeli army stormed the largest ship, the Mavi Marmara, the activists they encountered were in no way exclusively docile peaceniks. Some of the "peace activists" ...
Big blunder cost New Jersey teachers years of goodwill
Post Date: 2010-05-27 10:26:13 by Badeye
11 Comments
Big blunder cost New Jersey teachers years of goodwill By Kevin Manahan May 27, 2010, 5:05AM Ed Murray/The Star-LedgerKevin Stinson, a high school social studies teacher in Leonia, protested Gov. Chris Christie's budget cuts during Saturday's protest in Trenton.My father spent nearly his entire career in public relations at AT&T, so he was always dispensing advice on how to handle personal crises, big and small. And when I would come home from my high school job of stocking shelves at King’s Supermarket, complaining about some ungracious customer, he would remind me: “AT&T spends millions of dollars trying to shape the public’s opinion of us, but it takes ...
Letting Rand Paul Twist in the Wind
Post Date: 2010-05-27 09:47:11 by Badeye
10 Comments
Letting Rand Paul Twist in the Wind By Larry Elder www.JewishWorldReview.com | Libertarian Rand Paul, Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate from Kentucky, shocked many conservatives when he refused to give full-throated support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Act criminalized public sector racial discrimination, and struck down laws that required discrimination and segregation. But it went much further. It outlawed racial discrimination by private actors such as restaurant and hotel owners who refused to serve blacks. National Review's Rich Lowry, for example, wrote: "[T]he Civil Rights Act was the last spasm of the Civil War. The South had frustrated the ...
Joe Sestak and the phantom -- or was it? -- job offer
Post Date: 2010-05-27 09:44:57 by Badeye
1 Comments
Joe Sestak and the phantom -- or was it? -- job offer Did the Obama administration offer him a job to get him the quit the race against Arlen Specter? It should be an easy question to answer. May 27, 2010 It's no secret that the Obama administration wanted Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) to drop his primary challenge to Republican-turned-Democrat Sen. Arlen Specter. But did President Obama's representatives try to entice Sestak into leaving the race by promising him a job? It's a simple question, and one that Sestak already has answered in the affirmative, but the administration continues to treat the issue as much ado about nothing. Actually, it's much ado about something. Yes, ...
Sarah Palin's fact-free commentary on Paul and BP
Post Date: 2010-05-27 09:18:59 by war
3 Comments
Has Sarah Palin learned anything since she was plucked from obscurity almost two years ago? Not that I can tell. It was not Palin's fault that she was woefully unprepared to be the Republican vice presidential nominee. For that one, blame the petulant, impetuous John McCain. But Palin has had ample time now, outside the crash course of a presidential campaign, to develop and exhibit some understanding of the issues. Her learning curve, from all the available evidence, is a flat line. Three unattractive Palin traits have, if anything, been amplified since the election: her unwillingness to buckle down and do the necessary preparation; her tendency to adopt what McCain adviser Steve ...
Watching Israel Delegitimize the U.S.
Post Date: 2010-05-26 21:30:18 by Brian S
1 Comments
What’s behind the sudden crisis in Korea? Who benefits? Which nation’s nuclear arsenal is problematic? The U.S.-Israeli relationship has long been America’s Achilles heel. Our first president warned against “entangled alliances” particularly when, as here, there’s a “passionate attachment.” Our “special relationship” with this rogue state has placed the U.S. outside the same system of international law that we now seek to impose on others, including Iran. Our handling of the current crisis on the Korean peninsula could restore our tattered reputation. What’s the first issue that needs to be addressed? Here’s where you the reader ...
Sarah Palin's candidates having bad week. Could darling of 'tea party' voters be losing her touch?
Post Date: 2010-05-26 19:32:52 by Brian S
0 Comments
May 26, 2010 | 8:39 am During primary season, Sarah Palin's endorsement was seen as a gift from the heavens in Republican circles -- the seal of good housekeeping for "tea party" activists. Candidates who received the former Alaska governor's blessing soon soared in the polls, as money and volunteers poured in. Ditto the spotlight of national attention. Now, it's easy to wonder if Palin's political Midas touch has turned to rust. In Kentucky, the self-professed oracle for tea party anger has gotten himself in trouble with his mouth. First Rand Paul questioned the 1964 Civil Rights Act for forcing private businesses to integrate public spaces. ...
Another Day, Another Security Leak
Post Date: 2010-05-26 10:03:15 by Badeye
2 Comments
Another Day, Another Security Leak J. E. Dyer - 05.25.2010 - 5:51 PM The New York Times reported Monday that General David Petraeus issued a secret directive in September, expanding covert military operations in the Middle East. The author, Mark Mazzetti, states that the Times’ staff has viewed a copy of the document. Preparation for the article included speaking to government officials who discussed its contents only on condition of anonymity, because it’s classified. Fortunately, our information security usually works better than this. Leaks of national-security secrets are the exception and not the rule. But once again, someone on the government payroll, with a clearance, and ...
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