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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “Gore People who commit their lives to going green are just better people. They’re more moral, more honest. At least, they keep telling us that, and apparently many students believe it, say University of Toronto psychologists. They initially quizzed the students on their impressions of people who buy eco-friendly products, and for the most part, they considered such consumers to be more ‘more cooperative, altruistic and ethical’ than ordinary consumers. Then the researchers took it an extra step: They ran a test to see who would be more likely to cheat and steal: Greens? Or conventional shoppers? They divided the greens and conventional shoppers, and then gave the students a test that tempted them to steal money. The researchers found: The green consumers were more likely to cheat than the conventional purchasers, and they stole more money when asked to withdraw their winnings from envelopes on their desks.” [editor’s note: While I’d question the validity of this particular study overall, given the “entitlement mentality” of many “progressives” regarding “social justice” … the results are hardly surprising - SAT] (03/18/10) Link: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/18/green-crooks Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Anders Ydstedt & Dick Patten Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “America sits at the same economic crossroads today that Sweden faced five years ago. Sweden’s experience in eliminating the death tax could help the United States save businesses and add jobs at a critical time. Once known as Europe’s socialist paradise, Sweden still has one of the world’s highest top income tax rates (57 percent). But like the US, it no longer has an inheritance tax, or what Americans commonly refer to as the estate or ‘death’ tax. The Swedish Parliament abolished its inheritance tax in late 2004. … The country’s entrepreneurs were moving offshore — and taking their companies with them. The death tax was only making a bad situation worse.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjodnsv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Orange County Register Author: Deroy Murdock Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and her henchpersons are whipping Democrats to secure 216 votes to pass the Senate’s healthcare reform bill. The Senate then would approve a companion ‘reconciliation’ measure to deodorize some of the more pungent legislative bribes and corrupt deals that helped grease the Senate legislation’s passage last Christmas Eve. Nebraska’s so-called ‘Cornhusker Kickback,’ the ‘Louisiana Purchase’ and Florida’s ‘Gator-Aid’ are among the most sinus-piercing payoffs. Before they vote, however, wavering Democrats should wonder: ‘What if the Senate doesn’t deliver?’ … ‘House Democrats are being asked by the president to hold hands, jump off a cliff, and hope (Senate Majority Leader) Harry Reid catches them in the Senate after the bill is law,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., told CBS’ Face the Nation last Sunday.” (03/17/10) Link: http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/senate-239918-house-democrats.html Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Jacoby Posted on 03.18.10 by Steve Trinward “In the first half of the 20th century, Cleveland was an economic powerhouse. … Today that golden age is just a memory. Cleveland’s population now is not even half of what it was at its peak. Its median household income is less than $28,000, far below the national average of $50,300. One out of every five homes in Cleveland stands vacant. ‘The economy is in trouble, the schools are in trouble, and people have been leaving the city in droves for a long, long time,’ says TV star Drew Carey, a Clevelander born and bred. Carey appears in Reason Saves Cleveland, a wonderfully incisive series of mini-documentaries produced by the Reason Foundation and airing this week at reason.tv, its video website. … The Reason Foundation’s approach is libertarian. Its video series repeatedly contrasts the sclerotic, top-down culture that so often stifles innovation in Cleveland with the decentralized, entrepreneurial approaches that would encourage it.” (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylb4t36 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: George Neumayr Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “According to the Washington Post, taxpayers are now financing, via a $321,000 HHS grant, a pilot program at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center-Presbyterian Hospital and Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh to obtain organs from emergency room patients, a practice heretofore ‘considered off-limits in the United States because of ethical and logistical concerns.’ The goal of the project, reports the paper, is to ‘investigate whether it is feasible and, if so, to encourage other hospitals nationwide to follow.’ The article is somewhat obtuse about the longstanding moral problem at the center of organ transplantation, which is that the donors aren’t actually dead.” (03/18/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/18/the-futures-shadow Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Michael Barone Posted on 03.18.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The Democratic leadership’s struggle to pass the Senate health-care bill in the House looks like a great case study for political scientists. They have many examples of the leaders of a majority party trying to push controversial legislation through a balky chamber. But seldom have the political incentives of the party leadership and the party’s members been so differently aligned.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yllljny Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “Washington’s ruling class must believe that, like 5-year-olds, if you cover your ears and repeat ‘I can’t hear you,’ all problems go away. On the one-year anniversary of the $787 billion stimulus scheme last month, Vice President Joe Biden said taxpayers had ‘gotten their money’s worth’ from the massive waste of tax dollars. Biden said the program, now a year old, was designed to be implemented in two stages, saying ‘we’ve only been halfway through the act.’ Or maybe we’ve driven off a cliff and are halfway to the bottom. Tom Schatz, president of Citizens Against Government Waste, is also skeptical.” (03/16/10) Link: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/16/delusional/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Robbins Posted on 03.17.10 by Steve Trinward “When she was four, the daughter of friends would circle the dining room table during political discussions, waiting for one of the adults to use a word that her nursery school teacher had admonished the class never to use. When one of us inevitably used the offending word, she would wag her finger and scold: ‘Don’t say ’stupid!” Politeness notwithstanding, the announcement by an Israeli bureaucrat that additional housing had been approved in East Jerusalem, made while Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel and just after the Palestinian Authority had finally been persuaded to resume peace negotiations with Israel, however indirectly, was stupid and indefensible. And that is why the Israeli government made no pretense at defending it.” (03/18/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhz5cmx Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Intellectual Conservative Author: Robert Higgs Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In sum, when we disaggregate the recent increase in personal income, we find signs that the recovery has been weaker and less sustainable than many observers have taken it to be. Not all sources of personal income are created equal, and in the present circumstances, not even the rise in personal rental income counts as grounds for optimism. Because the recovery, such as it is, has begun only recently, it may acquire a healthier tone as it proceeds, if indeed it does. For the moment, however, we must recognize that recent changes give little warrant to the expectation of a full, sustainable recovery in the near term.” (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yb43w4k Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: John P. Walters Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The anti-antidrug camp had high hopes that Barack Obama would end ‘drug prohibition.’ Last year, George Soros, a leading proponent of drug legalization and perhaps the most generous financial backer of the president, seemed in a position to get the change he wanted. In fact, Obama drug czar Gil Kerlikowske made it his first order of business to tell the press he was ending ‘the drug war.’ More significantly, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that federal enforcement regarding ‘medical marijuana’ would be dialed back, which caused the number of storefront marijuana shops in Los Angeles to skyrocket. Things are looking a little different a year later, however. Kerlikowske turned old school and proclaimed that drug legalization was not in the administration’s ‘vocabulary.’ The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) continues to enforce marijuana laws in California (although without vocal support from Holder). And the Obama administration just released its first drug control budget requesting a fully funded, well, drug war.” [editor’s note: As a former top government drug thug, Walters naturally considers this good news. Hopefully, he’ll someday have an opportunity to make his argument in orange coveralls - TLK] (for publication 03/22/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/obama-just-says-no-soros Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Jonah Goldberg Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The case against the tea-party movement is constantly evolving. Initially, they were written off as ‘astroturfers,’ faux populists paid by K Street lobbyists to provide damaging footage for Fox News’s Obama coverage. Then they were deemed racists who couldn’t handle having a black president. But now that the movement — or, more broadly, the Obama backlash — has become so widespread, it’s being chalked up to populist anti-elitism.” (03/17/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yba9trk Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Peter Ferrara Posted on 03.17.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “When Ben Franklin first emerged from the Constitutional Convention, he was asked by a passerby, ‘What government have you given us?’ Franklin replied, ‘A Republic, if you can keep it.’ For 220 years, until last year, we did keep it. America was a democratic constitutional republic, governed by the rule of law, a beacon of liberty to the entire world. But no more. After just one year of Barack Obama’s fundamental change, aided by the far left House Speaker Nancy Pelosi from San Francisco, and the easily confused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, America has been transformed from a Constitutional Republic into a Banana Republic.” [editor’s note: Ferrara seems to have memory-holed the eight intensely “banana republican” years immediately preceding, and creating the template for, the Obama regime - TLK] (03/17/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/17/turning-america-into-a-banana Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: staff Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “A national broadband plan for America argues that high-speed Internet service is as vital to America’s economy as electric power. Everyone should have access to it. Everyone should be able to afford it. As anyone who writes a school report, looks for a job, buys something on eBay, or watches videos on YouTube knows, that’s a pretty easy case to make. The Federal Communications Commission does so in its National Broadband Plan. The hefty document was sent to Congress Tuesday. The question is, how does America go from 200 million broadband users at home to adding another 100 million (just about everyone) by 2020?” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y8k3fyr Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Lawrence Harmon Posted on 03.16.10 by Steve Trinward “College acceptance and rejection letters will be arriving in the mail in the coming days, launching high school seniors into the joyous or consoling embrace of parents. But many prospective college students aren’t watching anxiously for the mail carrier. Instead, they are busy attending to the needs of their own children and workplaces. The traditional 18- to 22-year-old residing on campus is no longer the norm. Almost three-quarters of undergraduates fall into the ‘nontraditional’ category, according to a 2002 National Center for Education Statistics report, meaning they work full time, are financially independent, attend college part time, or didn’t go directly from high school to higher education. … College isn’t just for children anymore.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yzze8jt Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Daniel McCarthy Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “I recently came across an astonishing assertion about the Community Reinvestment Act, the legislation tagged by many on the Right as to blame for the financial meltdown. According to what I was reading, the CRA was really a good thing since banks covered by CRA were only one-third as likely as other financial institutions to originate subprime mortgage loans, even though the former were denying loan applications at the significantly lower rate. This might pose a problem for people who want to blame the crisis entirely on CRA, but other than weakening that argument, this claim actually says very little since CRA only applies to (some) banks and savings institutions, not to non-bank financial services companies like the late Countrywide Financial, which were the biggest speculators in the mortgage market.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ya9n3uv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Noemie Emery Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “A stranger moment in politics has seldom been seen. A vast expansion of government that affects every one of the country’s 300-plus million inhabitants may be passed by a hair against fierce and fiercely repeated public opposition by a Congress that no longer speaks for its voters — most of whose members are angry and scared. They are afraid of their voters, and mad at each other, or rather, the Democrats are: The liberals are mad at the centrists, the centrists are mad at the liberals. Democrats in the House are angry at those in the Senate, and deeply suspicious of being betrayed. The centrists are also mad at Obama, for picking the wrong cause (health care and not the economy), doing it in the wrong way (big and expensive, not incremental and smaller), and pushing them to risk their careers in backing a cause and a program neither they nor their constituents want.” (for publication 03/22/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/dead-congress-walking Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Larry Kudlow Posted on 03.16.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Surprise, surprise. Sen. Chris Dodd’s financial-regulation proposal raises the possibility of substantial progress on the road to ending ‘too big to fail’ (TBTF) and bailout nation for banks and other financial institutions. How the Dodd bill will play out in the final details remains to be seen. But when you read the Dodd fact sheet, there are a few key items to like.” (03/16/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y99lvpb Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Having an extra $250 pocket money to spend while jetting around the world’s capitals sounds pretty good to most people. But it’s chump change to some members of Congress. Taxpayers are the chumps. The $250 a day we give members is rarely spent on food, reports the Washington Times: ‘(S)chedules typically are jam-packed on foreign junkets, especially with meals and banquets sponsored by interests looking to curry favor with American VIPs. The fact is, our public servants rarely need their lavish street cash to get fed, so they blow taxpayer money on other things rather than return their leftover per diem.’ Congressional rules say they must return leftover cash to the government. They usually don’t, writes the Wall Street Journal. ‘(L)awmakers use the excess cash for shopping or to defray spouses’ travel expenses. Sometimes they give it away; sometimes they pocket it.’” (03/14/10) Link: http://stossel.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2010/03/14/chump-change/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: staff Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Although President Obama has yet to achieve much on jobs, healthcare, or energy, he is on track to transform America’s education. He has pushed many states to reform education laws by dangling $4.35 billion in incentive grants. Now he wants to alter the No Child Left Behind law by rewarding schools that do well and revamping those schools that don’t. … This middle way is necessary in a country that treats public schools as a largely local concern and that is wary of one-size-fits-all federal solutions. It helps, too, that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan once ran Chicago’s schools and saw firsthand how No Child went too far — and not far enough.” [editor’s note: This one bears watching; if a national standard for rating student (and teacher) achievement sets the bar reasonably, and then gets out of the way, it could be only a small hurdle foe states seeking to rise above it - SAT] (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ygf747y Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: James Carroll Posted on 03.15.10 by Steve Trinward “Think of Niagara Falls. Think of the onrushing current as the river pours itself toward the massive cascade. Imagine a lone swimmer a hundred yards or so upstream, desperately stroking against the current to keep from being swept over the precipice. That swimmer is President Obama, the river is the world, and the falls is the threat of unchecked nuclear weapons. Henry James used the image of Niagara to describe the rush into World War I: ‘the tide that bore us along.’ Hannah Arendt defined the wars of the 20th century as events ‘cascading like a Niagara Falls of history. …’ But now the image has entered the lexicon of strategic experts who warn of a coming ‘cascade of proliferation,’ one nation following another into the deadly chasm of nuclear weapons unless present nuclear powers find a way to reverse the current.” (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykxj66v Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Robert Stacy McCain Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Although Democratic attack ads last year branded [Conservative Party congressional candidate Doug] Hoffman a millionaire indifferent to working-class interests, he grew up desperately poor and his rags-to-riches success story was one of the major selling points of his underdog campaign. If the Republican establishment shoves Hoffman aside in favor of Barclay, it would do more than reinforce the Democrats’ traditional class-warfare message that the GOP is the ‘party of the rich.’ It would also send a message to the party’s conservative rank-and-file that their loyalty to Republicans is strictly a one-way street, never to be respected in any instance where grassroots preferences conflict with the political ambitions of party insiders.” (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yj7lwob Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Ramesh Ponnuru Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Here’s the pitch: The FairTax — a plan to replace the federal income tax and payroll tax with a national sales tax — will get rid of the IRS forever. It will let workers keep their entire paychecks and retirees keep their entire pensions. It will raise just as much money as the current tax code. It will promote economic growth. It won’t hurt the middle class, and it won’t cause prices to rise. It will even end our illegal-immigration problem. … The FairTax sounds too good to be true. It is. The campaign for the FairTax is deeply misleading, and much more likely to set back the cause of tax reform than to advance it.” (03/15/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yg3b9wb Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Irwin M. Stelzer Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Now we know. Two million of the ‘good jobs’ America needs to create in the next five years are to come from doubling American exports. So President Obama promised Thursday. We are to have a ‘National Export Initiative,’ an ‘export promotion cabinet’ consisting of representatives of several federal agencies, a private sector advisory committee on international trade, and promotion of exports by a president who will get tough with our trading partners who ‘have not played by the same set of rules’ as we have. Push exports, and make it more difficult for our trading partners to send stuff to us, unless they conform to our notions of proper labor and environmental standards. This approach is consistent with the administration’s philosophy that the best way to solve a problem is to erect still another government apparatus.” (03/13/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obamas-trade-trouble Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Intellectual Conservative Author: Alan Caruba Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Despite what you will be told, the Fair Tax will collect the same amount of revenue as the income tax, but it will spread the burden more equitably and transparently. It would literally eliminate any need for the Internal Revenue Service because it is a tax of 23% on what consumers spend ‘instead of an average of 30% of all the money they earn.’” [editor’s note: Actually, it’s a 30% tax, not a 23% tax, and if it’s money you earned and banked before the “Fair” Tax is implemented, you get to pay the 30% sales tax when you spend it, ON TOP of the income tax you paid when you earned it. It’s hard to come up with a worse idea than the income tax, but the “Fair” Taxers somehow managed it - TLK] (03/15/10) Link: http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2010/03/15/we-want-a-fair-tax/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Sean Scallon Posted on 03.15.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Raw milk is basically unpasteurized milk. Farm families have drank such milk for years and would sell it to customers through cow-boarding or farm-share arrangements even though the practice was technically illegal. State Ag officials in the past basically looked the other way. That was until now when officials decided to crack down on the practice threatening the livelihood of small farmers like Brunner. This prompted several bills in the legislature to be written and a state taskforce has been set up to look into the issue. Drinking such milk may or may not cause health problems. Some drink it because it ‘does a body good’ to coin a phrase or like the taste. 25 states and many counties in Europe allow such sales. Regardless of why, do they not have the right to drink it if they are aware of potential health risks?, especially if it’s sold by licensed farms on one-to-one basis. Is this not what a free market is about? And yet who stands in opposition? Government bureaucrats and the big farmer, big agribusiness dominated Farm Bureau. One wishes to regulate behavior and the other wishes to regulate out of existence a product that may cut in on their business.” (03/14/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/14/free-soil-free-men-free-milk/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Town Hall Author: Paul Jacob Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “In the grand scheme of things — among all the wasteful, foolish, corrupting things engaged in by members of Congress — earmarks are one small item. We read about the latest insider deals in the morning paper, but earmarks certainly don’t capture the intense media attention that congressional groping and tickling do. Nor do earmarks account for much of the gross spending, relatively. In the last fiscal year budget, out of roughly a trillion dollars in discretionary federal spending, only $16 billion was blown via thousands of earmarks. So, why all the fuss? It’s not merely that a little corruption, unchecked, tends to lead to bigger corruption. It is also that a little corruption is still, well … corruption. And corruption of any size, shape or partisan color is wrong. Allowing individual congressmen to personally bestow chunks of federal money to various for-profit businesses or non-profit groups can only corrupt.” (03/14/10) Link: http://townhall.com/columnists/PaulJacob/2010/03/14/deaf_on_earmarks Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Patrik Jonsson Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “Emergence of the grass-roots ‘tea party’ movement as a major force on the American political right is having a quiet but fundamental effect on the Republican tribe: Social conservatives have been voted off the island. … Of course, many say tea-party rhetoric emphasizing a basic constitutional framework is code for a return to Christian values these activists see as enshrined in the Constitution by the Founders — a foundation that would seem to give them much in common with social conservatives. … But among grass-roots tea party leaders, social issues such as abortion, gay rights and marijuana legalization are held at arm’s length in favor of fiscal issues that can appeal to independents, Democrats and, most important, suburban conservatives.” (03/13/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykhwxdw Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Jacoby Posted on 03.14.10 by Steve Trinward “In India each year, it is estimated that as many as a million baby girls are aborted by parents determined not to raise a daughter. Those unborn girls are the victims of a fierce cultural preference for boys — and of modern imaging technology that makes it easy to learn the sex of a baby in the womb. Ultrasound scans started becoming widely available in India in the 1980s; since then, an estimated 10 million female babies have been destroyed during pregnancy. Sex-selection tests are illegal in India. So are sex-selective abortions. But the laws are rarely enforced and easily circumvented. … It isn’t only in India that unborn girls are being killed on such a mass scale.” (03/14/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yfefscu Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Human Events Author: Valerie Richardson Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Colorado Democrats predicted that revoking what they described as the Internet sales-tax exemption would bring an additional $5 million to the state’s depleted coffers. Instead, it appears the Democrat-controlled legislature has killed an entire industry at the cost of as many as 10,000 jobs. Almost immediately after Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter signed the legislation, Amazon struck back. The company sent out emails to its associates informing them that it would cease its affiliate program in Colorado. That means Colorado website operators can no longer earn income by referring customers to Amazon through links and advertising on their sites.” (03/12/10) Link: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=35993 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: National Review Author: John J. Pitney, Jr. Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Republicans hope that 2010 will be a rerun of 1994. There are some striking similarities, which should give them hope. But there are also key differences, which should give them pause.” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yd7u9bc Filed under: CANDi Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: James C. Capretta and Yuval Levin Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Beyond taxes and spending, Obama-care would also wreak havoc on the labor market. Because employers would get penalized if any of their low- and moderate-wage workers ended up in the new subsidized insurance pool, they would avoid hiring such workers. Democrats claim they want to jam through health care reform so they can turn their attention to jobs, but the bill provides a strong disincentive for businesses to hire those who need jobs the most.” (for publication 03/22/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/anti-jobs-bill Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Austin Bramwell Posted on 03.14.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “That sprawl opponents want to restrict development is well-known; less well-known is that existing laws make it impossible to develop anything but sprawl. To save cognitive resources, libertarians rationally overestimate the importance of available information (being anti-sprawl means being anti-development!) at the expense of information that takes time and effort to gather (being anti-sprawl also means being anti-central planning). This doesn’t excuse John Stossel, who presumably had time to research his vindication of sprawl before broadcasting it, but it does explain why others make similar mistakes. Indeed, the availability heuristic explains why both libertarians and their opponents so often assume that the free market causes sprawl.” (03/12/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y95cmcm Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: Kelly Shackelford Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Everyone’s heard the advertisement that claims, ‘what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.’ While that’s questionable, one thing that is not questionable is that what happens in the Texas education battle will not just stay in Texas. What your kids learn about historical figures like Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein most likely depends on what happens in Texas in the next two days. Texas is in the process of adopting its social studies standards, which only happens every ten years. The standards cover U.S. Government, American History, World History and more, and they affect how students in grades K–12 see America, its founding principles, and its heroes for the next decade. … [W]hat happens in Texas will impact the nation.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ylqxngs Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Richard L. Scott Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Which is better in war? Wipe out a nation completely and start fresh? Merely disarm the enemy through aggressive tactics? Or subdue through nonaggressive means altogether? Philosophers from Niccolo Machiavelli to Carl von Clausewitz to Sun Tzu have been debating the most effective means to approach warfare for centuries. Today, the United States has been actively fighting two wars with high casualty rates for both sides. It would be valuable for the commander in chief and senior military leaders to consider the merits of a nonlethal approach to warfare.” [editor’s note: It would be far more valuable if societies were to stop starting wars in the first place, but as long as the thirst for empire and “We’re Number One” continues, it’s unlikely to occur - SAT] (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yb6haas Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Sabin Willett Posted on 03.11.10 by Steve Trinward “Last week in Washington, right-wingers rallied to a demand by Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley for the names of Justice Department attorneys who used to be with law firms representing Guantanamo detainees. Elizabeth Cheney’s Keep America Safe group released on YouTube a video denouncing the ‘Department of Jihad.’ Breathless announcers at Fox TV began publishing the names. The right has long asserted that the Obama administration is coddling detainees. Now they had an explanation. Lawyers were the enemy within. … So last week’s news was confusing. The much-maligned Justice Department lawyers are working against lawyers like me, Senator Grassley. If they are your enemy, they sure conceal it well.” (03/11/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjbbwre Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Sean Scallon Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It’s not surprising that only 65 members of the House of Representatives voted for a resolution that would have called for the end of the war in Afghanistan. Certainly the Democrats in charge were not going to approve a resolution that would have repudiated their own President’s foreign policy so recently after our ‘glorious victory’ in Marjah. What is surprising is so few Republicans voted for the resolution. Only five were willing do so: Ron Paul, Jimmy Duncan, Walter Jones Jr., the most consistent of the antiwar Republicans, along with John Campbell of California and Tim Johnson of Illinois.” (03/11/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/11/you-vote-for-it-you-own-it/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Matthew Continetti Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Paul Ryan’s Roadmap for America’s Future would drastically overhaul the American welfare state in a free-market direction. The Congressional Budget Office says it would solve the entitlements crisis through a series of changes to Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. The Roadmap also includes a fundamental tax reform — one that Ryan says, and the CBO assumes, would bring in revenues equivalent to the long-term historical average of 19-percent of GDP. Two new studies dispute that figure, however. I talked to Ryan this evening to get his response.” (03/10/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/paul-ryan-roadmap-warrior Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: David N. Bass Posted on 03.11.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Tea partiers gunning for a thorough congressional purge still have reason to hope — if not for mandatory term limits, at least the voluntary brand. Prompted by the wave of anti-establishment sentiment sweeping the nation, candidates are increasingly following in the footsteps of George Washington by self-limiting their tenure in office. Bonded term limits are an innovative way of doing that. The Alliance for Bonded Term Limits, a national nonpartisan group based in North Carolina, is spearheading the effort. It encourages candidates vying for elected office to put their money where their mouth is by promising to stay in office a maximum of three terms or forfeit a hefty chunk of their net worth. Five congressional candidates, all Republicans, have signed the pledge, and others are in the pipeline.” (03/11/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/11/us-house-cleaning Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “[T]his week I look at out of control state licensing requirements. The state of Louisiana now licenses 87 professions, including acupuncturist’s assistants, manicurists and even florists. You want to earn a living engaging in consensual trade with other adults? You must kiss the bureaucrats’ rings first. Fortunately, someone’s fighting back. My syndicated column this week features the efforts of the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm that specializes in challenging such intrusions on freedom. (Who knew there were lawyers who weren’t evil?)” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9yewbv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: H.D.S. Greenway Posted on 03.10.10 by Steve Trinward “It will take many weeks of coalition building after Sunday’s election before we know who rules Iraq, or whether the country will unite or splinter along sectarian fault lines, but for the United States it will mean success or failure. The outcome will shape Iraq’s post-America future. Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group posed the vital, worst-case scenario question. ‘If you got back to a situation of chaos and of uncontrolled violence in Iraq, would that lead the administration to say we’ve done our best, it’s now up to the Iraqis, we’re leaving? Or, on the contrary,’ Malley asked on National Public Radio, ‘would it persuade the administration that it needs to stay a little bit longer, act a little bit more forcefully?’” (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjepage Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: US Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The prospect of Nixon’s shadow falling across his administration must surely unsettle Barack Obama. The legacy of Richard Nixon has suffered for decades whenever an instance of political dishonor required historic quantification. Every time the ubiquitous suffix ‘gate’ is applied to political scandals both great and small — from Clinton-era Travelgate to today’s Climategate — we are forced to think in terms of Richard Nixon. In the minds of the American people, the Nixon years were fraught with criminal conspiracies, dirty tricks, and Machiavellian political machinations. Yet there are some lessons that President Obama would do well to learn from Nixon, particularly when it comes to our nation’s approach to the global terrorist threat.” (03/10/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykc3jxc Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Ralph R. Reiland Posted on 03.10.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “On average, taxes ate up every cent we earned last year from January 1 through April 13, according to the Tax Foundation’s analysis: ‘Tax Freedom Day answers the basic question, ‘What price is the nation paying for government?’ An official government figure for total tax collections is divided by the nation’s total income. The answer last year is that taxes amounted to 28.2 percent of our income, and the stretch of 103 days from January 1 to April 13 is 28.2 percent of the year.’ Add last year’s unprecedented federal budget deficit to the total taxes collected and the cost of government moves to May 29. That’s 41 percent of our total income to pay the price of government. Thomas Jefferson thought it was time to grab the muskets off the wall at 1 percent.” (03/10/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/10/losing-faith-in-the-feds Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Patrick J. Buchanan Posted on 03.09.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Nevada, Arizona and New Jersey are staring at budget gaps of 25 percent. New York and Illinois are not far behind. Michigan has an unemployment rate of 14 percent. Detroit is the quintessential sick city. Republicans may get by this fall surfing an anti-government wave. But they will soon have to reveal where exactly they propose to cut. Fortunately, good politics and good policy give the same answer. USA Today’s lead story on Friday — ‘It Pays to Work for Uncle Sam’ — contrasted the wages and benefits of federal workers with those of employees in the private sector.” (03/09/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/09/who-should-pay-the-piper/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: staff Posted on 03.09.10 by Steve Trinward “The Food and Drug Administration has done far too little to avoid conflicts of interest among those who serve on its scientific panels and advisory boards. The latest example came last Monday, when the agency appointed to a tobacco advisory committee two scientists who have financial ties to companies that sell smoking cessation products. One of the scientists, Jack Henningfield, makes most of his income from a consulting company that has GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Nicorette gum, as a client, according to a Wall Street Journal report. The other, Neil L. Benowitz, formerly worked as a consultant for GlaxoSmithKline and still consults for Pfizer, which makes the quit-smoking drug Chantix. It could be worse. The pair of scientists could have financial ties to cigarette makers — which would violate federal law since the two will vote on recommendations for how to regulate the tobacco industry. But no matter how honorable the individuals involved, there’s a clear danger when those who decide whether menthol cigarettes should be banned and whether smokeless tobacco products are safe also stand to profit from the sale of products that help people quit smoking.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y94zka5 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Jeffrey Lord Posted on 03.09.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It was called the ‘nullification contagion.’ And it was a battle royal. Literally. Once upon-a-time in America, a tumultuous battle over the freedom to drink alcoholic beverages raged across the land. It was the health care battle of early 20th century America, and it was furious, divisive and eventually savagely bloody.” (03/09/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yf7by3t Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.08.10 by Steve Trinward “Just days after Guatemala’s drug czar and national police chief were both arrested on charges of drug corruption, the Washington Post reported this weekend that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged corrupt Latin American governments to, well, try harder to fight corruption. … So, let’s get this straight: Both Guatemala’s drug czar and national police chief have been arrested for drug corruption. Their predecessors? Also arrested for drug corruption. And the Administration’s response? Spend over a billion more on the same strategy. It’s maddening to read articles like this. Nowhere does the article even consider the obvious possibility that drug prohibition is the root of drug corruption. It’s not like Latin America struggles to deal with alcohol or coffee corruption.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yapku76 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Monika Kalra Varma & Loune Viaud Posted on 03.08.10 by Steve Trinward “Since January’s devastating earthquake in Haiti, well-meaning experts have proposed an abundance of short-term and long-term recovery solutions. They ask why aid delivery has been so slow, why previous development plans for Haiti have rarely been successful, and why billions of dollars in funding over decades have not improved conditions for the most impoverished people in our hemisphere. … The simple answer is that those who have the greatest stake in rebuilding Haiti, Haitians themselves, don’t now and never have had a real seat at the table. While Haitian resilience has been duly recognized around the world, few appear to be interested in talking to Haitians about how to rebuild their communities and how the billions likely to be pledged to their country will be used. And no one is talking about what recourse Haitians will have if promised projects are never completed, or worse, pledged money never arrives.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ybeh2g6 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Robert Rector Posted on 03.08.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “This week, the Obama administration announced it will create a new poverty-measurement system that will eventually displace the current poverty measure. This new measure, which has little or nothing to do with actual poverty, will serve as the propaganda tool in Obama’s endless quest to ’spread the wealth.’ Under the new measure, a family will be judged ‘poor’ if its income falls below a certain specified income threshold. Nothing new there, but, unlike the current poverty standards, the new income thresholds will have a built-in escalator clause: They will rise automatically in direct proportion to any rise in the living standards of the average American.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yjpb7x4 Filed under: CANDi Commentary | |
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Source: Intellectual Conservative Author: Phillip Ellis Jackson Posted on 03.08.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “We exist because of the consent of the governed. This is why I pay taxes I don’t like to pay, observe laws I don’t necessarily agree with, and acknowledge people I didn’t vote for as my legitimate elected leaders. Start to screw with one of the basic foundational documents that underscores my buy-in to this system, and I start to ask myself some troubling questions. Just why the hell do I need to honestly pay my taxes? Why should I obey laws that I personally disagree with. And most troubling of all, so what if my candidate lost the election — this new guy can’t legitimately tell me what to do. We’re not there yet as a nation. But we’re getting much closer to this point than I ever imagined.” (03/08/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yljvvsx Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Philip Jenkins Posted on 03.08.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Nobody is sure how it started. Perhaps Christian activists sent text messages warning that Muslims were trying to poison them. Maybe Muslims tried to storm a church. Whatever the cause, the consequence this past January was mayhem for the Nigerian city of Jos. Muslim-Christian rioting killed up to 500 people before the government intervened with its customary heavy hand. The most striking point about these battles was that nobody found them striking. In Jos, as in countless other regions across Africa and Asia, violence between Christians and Muslims can erupt at any time, with the potential to detonate riots, civil wars, and persecutions. While these events are poorly reported in the West, they matter profoundly.” (for publication 04/01/10) Link: http://amconmag.com/article/2010/apr/01/00022/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Orange County Register Blog Author: Alan Bock Posted on 03.07.10 by Steve Trinward “… if the federal government actually obeyed its own laws. … The relevant law is the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which establishes five lists or ’schedules’ of progressively decreasing strictness for drugs and other controlled substances. The strictest is Schedule I, on which marijuana was put as a placeholder with the promise that the ‘medical community’ would decide if it should stay there. Possession and use of these drugs is strictly forbidden. … According to all the relevant available scientific information, as affirmed by the chief administrative law judge of the Drug Enforcement Administration way back in 1988 (and as most recently confirmed by the California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego), marijuana or cannabis meets none of these criteria.” (03/05/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ye9ow7c Filed under: CANDi Commentary and LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: National Review Author: Rich Lowry Posted on 03.07.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Obama poured $5 billion into weatherization as part of last year’s stimulus and wanted to spend billions more in a second stimulus. The Department of Energy managed to get the money to the states, where it has swelled the coffers for weatherization and done little else. According to a Department of Energy inspector general report last month, ‘only 2 of the 10 highest funded recipients completed more than 2 percent of planned units.’ New York had completed 280 out of 45,400 planned units as of December, Texas had completed 0 of 33,908, and California 12 out of 43,400. That’s 292 homes in three states with a total population of roughly 80 million. So much for the 87,000 jobs the administration promised ‘right away.’” (03/05/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yce8cvl Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Matthew Continetti Posted on 03.07.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Advanced democracies hedge against whatever nature might throw at them. They establish building codes and draft emergency protocols. They prepare for the crises they know will arrive, even if they do not know the exact times and places. Yet when it comes to the disasters that result from human activity, disasters that are long in the making, we turn a blind eye. A few brave voices may sound the alarm. But no one really listens. The individuals who benefit from the current arrangements offer excuse after excuse. The situation can be contained, they say. No need to be proactive. No need for boldness. Consider the federal budget.” (for publication 03/15/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/reckless-any-speed Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Kara Hopkins Posted on 03.07.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In today’s Washington Post, Robert Kagan writes of ‘a broad bipartisan consensus emerging in one unlikely area: foreign policy.’ Half right: there is agreement across the aisle that American security depends on leveling Afghan villages and hectoring Iran. Much as ‘the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’ would like to give Republicans a franchise on clueless crusading, the left hand is at least as bloody. President Obama’s promised change is basically Bushianism with more intelligible captions. But had Kagan polled beyond his friends at the Project for a New American Century, he would have found as much contention as consensus. On the Right, with the impulse to support a Republican president gone, dissenters are no longer automatically ‘unpatriotic.’ And the Left is splintered between old school antiwarriors and Obamaphiles who would cheer any intervention given enough humanitarian gloss.” (03/05/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2010/03/05/all-kagans-agree/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: James P. Pinkerton Posted on 03.04.10 by Steve Trinward “If I told you that Generation Zero is the best movie about deficit spending and national debt that you will ever see, would you think I was making a joke? As in, how much competition can there be in such a category? OK, there’s not much competition in the ‘fiscal film’ category. But Generation Zero … is going to do for the tea party movement — and the larger cause of controlling government spending — what Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth did for the global warming debate. There are some differences, however.” (03/04/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yg5q4nz Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: staff Posted on 03.04.10 by Steve Trinward “Congress has never really had a full-throated debate over abortion, one that would help find a political truce on a recurring issue that still divides Americans nearly four decades after the Supreme Court’s decision on Roe v. Wade. No wonder then that the possibility of federal money being used to pay for abortions under the Senate version of healthcare reform might derail its passage in the more abortion-sensitive House. About 12 antiabortion Democrats, such as Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan, threaten to vote against the Senate bill, even though they voted for the House bill last fall. Their numbers alone could turn other Democrats against President Obama’s campaign for quick passage.” [editor’s note: If only there were an openness to a tax-ballot approach, whereby those who chose to could “earmark” their 1040 payments (and only funds actually “donated” could be used to fund abortion … or bailouts … or war?) … but then that would allow true “choice” into the issue - SAT] (03/04/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yaz4twv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Winslow T. Wheeler and Pierre M. Sprey Posted on 03.04.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Today’s Pentagon is led by its most widely respected secretary of defense in decades, one more in control and feared by the generals than any since the much-hated Robert McNamara. One would hope that with this stature, Robert Gates is nurturing a plan to reverse the decay afflicting our military forces. Think again. … Contrary to the invective that politicians and their think-tank cronies hurl against the Obama administration, this new plan does not ruin America’s air power with less money, but with more. It promotes some of the most gold-plated, mindlessly ineffective weapons seen since the Imperial Japanese Navy’s mega-battleships were dispatched to the bottom of the Pacific.” (for publication 04/01/10) Link: http://amconmag.com/article/2010/apr/01/00030/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: National Review Author: Andrew C. McCarthy Posted on 03.04.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In sum, Bunning’s battle gave Republicans a chance to make points about runaway deficit spending, the fraudulence of PAYGO posturing, the foolish redistribution of wealth to create expensive and unproductive government jobs, unemployment-benefit extensions that Democrats refuse to pay for and that actually increase unemployment, and the monstrous rationing that would be wrought by Obamacare. So, did Republicans rally behind Bunning? Not a chance.” (03/04/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yctykr3 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Philip Klein Posted on 03.04.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[A]ny chance Obama had of living up to his well-honed image as a post-partisan leader was tossed aside on Wednesday, as the president urged Democrats in Congress to disregard public opinion and ram through his health care bill using a parliamentary maneuver that doesn’t require bipartisan support. As it turns out, employing Rovian tactics in the pursuit of his liberal agenda is no vice. In the past week, President Obama staged a series of what historian Daniel Boorstin dubbed ‘pseudo-events,’ from a televised health care summit to the release of a letter offering token policy gestures to Republicans. The process culminated with the inevitable announcement that he would attempt to enact the most sweeping legislation since the Great Society with the once-poisonous ‘50-plus-one’ strategy.” (03/04/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/04/obama-goes-nuclear Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.03.10 by Steve Trinward “‘It’s a free country.’ That’s a popular saying — and true in many ways. But for a free country, America does ban a lot of things that are perfectly peaceful and consensual. Why is that? Here are some things you can’t do in most states of the union: rent your body to someone for sex, sell your kidney, take recreational drugs. The list goes on. … The prohibitionists say their rules are necessary for either the public’s or a particular individual’s own good. I’m skeptical. … Government force has nasty unintended consequences. I would think that our experience with alcohol prohibition would have taught America a lesson. Nearly everyone agrees it was a disaster. It didn’t stop people from drinking, but it created new and vicious strains of organized crime. Drug prohibition does that now.” (03/03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yc9qgk9 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and LAND Commentary and PND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Jeff Jacoby Posted on 03.03.10 by Steve Trinward “The case for global-warming alarmism is melting faster than those mythical disappearing Himalayan glaciers, but Al Gore isn’t backing down. … By ‘global-warming pollution,’ Gore means carbon dioxide (CO2), which is a ‘pollutant’ in roughly the way oxygen and water are pollutants: Human existence would be impossible without them. CO2 is essential to photosynthesis, the process that sustains plant life and generates the oxygen that human beings and animals inhale. Far from polluting the world, carbon dioxide enriches it. … Whatever else might be said about carbon dioxide, it has helped make possible a dramatic increase in the quality of many human lives. But there is no awareness of such tradeoffs in Gore’s latest screed.” (03/03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ydjdopu Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Right Guy Author: The Right Guy Posted on 03.03.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “There are two theories in management: A) Make the right decision or B) Make the decision and then make it right. According to The New York Times, ‘Karl Rove, the chief political adviser to President George W. Bush and architect of his two successful campaigns for the White House, says in a new memoir that his former boss probably would not have invaded Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction there.’ The question I ask is, was the president intentionally misinformed, or conveniently? My thesis on this expedition is that the administration used management technique B. This is not necessarily an indictment of W at all, but an honest observation.” (03/03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y85cmqj Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: W. James Antle III Posted on 03.03.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In his kiss-and-tell book about the second Bush administration, former White House speechwriter Matthew Latimer recounts drafting a presidential address to the largest gathering of conservative activists in the country. The president wasn’t happy with the frequent references to the conservative movement in the text. ‘Let me tell you something,’ George W. Bush is quoted as saying. ‘I whupped Gary Bauer’s ass in 2000. So take out all this movement stuff. There is no movement.’ Even if the tale is apocryphal, it captures the often abusive relationship between the conservative movement and the Republican Party. Millions of self-described conservatives manned the trenches for George W. Bush and the GOP. By the end of his presidency, many of them felt whupped by their own party. Now some of them are fighting back.” (03/03/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/03/party-bashing Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Jaime Daremblum Posted on 03.03.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The Cubanization of Venezuela began a long time ago, but it took another large step in early February, when Cuban general Ramiro Valdws arrived in Caracas to serve as a government consultant. Valdws, 77, has been one of the most brutal enforcers of the Castro regime, beginning in the 1960s when he was responsible for crushing popular protests over energy-use restrictions. He established Castro’s ruthless G2 intelligence service and is currently number three in the Cuban hierarchy. According to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, Valdes and his retinue are there to help the South American country solve its dire electricity crisis. Cuba has been experiencing major electricity problems for 50 years, so it’s unclear just what assistance its advisers would be able to provide on energy policy.” (for publication 03/08/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/cubanization-venezuela Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Conservative Author: Michael Brendan Dougherty Posted on 03.03.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The year-old movement is credited with reviving right-wing populism, annihilating President Obama’s healthcare reform, and electing Brown to Ted Kennedy’s seat. Rasmussen and ABC opinion polls reveal that the American people have a more favorable view of the Tea Party than they do of the Republican Party. The Wall Street Journal compares it to the Whiskey Rebellion, heralding it as the fruition of Perot-style populism, a great third force in American politics. But in reality, the Tea Party is not Pepenella’s mysterious vehicle of democratic will, nor does it signal the emergence of an alternative to Republicans and Democrats. It’s a leaderless coalition of conservative activists who for all their revolutionary vim look less likely to take over the GOP than to be taken over by it.” (for publication 04/01/10) Link: http://www.amconmag.com/article/2010/apr/01/00006/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 03.02.10 by Steve Trinward “Kayvan Setareh must be a terrible man; he was tossed into a Los Angeles jail last week. Held on $1 million bail. Did Setareh kill or kidnap someone? No. He put up a large movie ad on his building without a permit. Setareh finally got out of jail Monday; by agreeing to take down the eight-story ad, called a supergraphic, a judge lowered his bail to $100,000. This is the latest episode in the exploits of LA’s aesthetics police, sworn to protect the delicate sensitivities of Tinseltown.” (03/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ybzr4ck Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: John Lott Posted on 03.02.10 by Steve Trinward “In the 2008 Heller decision, the Supreme Court struck down Washington, D.C.’s handgun ban and gunlock requirements. Unsurprisingly, gun control advocates predicted disaster. They were wrong. What actually happened in our nation’s capital after the Heller decision ought to be remembered tomorrow as the Supreme Court hears a similar constitutional challenge to the Chicago handgun ban. … Armageddon never arrived. Quite the contrary, murders in Washington plummeted by an astounding 25 percent in 2009, dropping from 186 murders in 2008 to 140. That translates to a murder rate that is now down to 23.5 per 100,000 people, Washinton’s lowest since 1967.” (03/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ybfzdle Filed under: 2AM Commentary and CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Don Watkins & Yaron Brook Posted on 03.02.10 by Steve Trinward “Since the advent of capitalism, businessmen have been denounced for the corrupt actions of a few political profiteers. To help understand that there is a distinction, consider two characters in Ayn Rand’s 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged. In the book, Rand describes two opposite kinds of businessmen — the ‘producers’ and the ‘looters.’ … It is the producers who make life possible: who keep grocery shelves stocked; who discover new lifesaving drugs; who make computers faster, buildings taller, and airplanes safer. The looters, on the other hand, leech off the wealth created by producers.” (03/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/yhbm7bo Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: John E. Rosenthal Posted on 03.02.10 by Steve Trinward “President Obama must have discovered the cure for radiation-induced cancer, the solution for long-term safe storage of nuclear waste and the secure containment of nuclear materials from theft or terrorist attack at nuclear power plants. Why else would he propose to expand nuclear power plants with an additional $54 billion in loan guarantees to the already heavily subsidized nuclear industry? It’s more likely that the president is poised to repeat the same costly mistakes of the past at the expense of public health and safety and national security. Nuclear energy is anything but ‘clean and safe,’ as Obama has said. Utilities have traditionally refused to accept the risks without legal indemnification and almost total government underwriting.” (02/27/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/y9nezhb Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Doug Bandow Posted on 03.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “At the end of the day, McDonald is likely to be a repeat of the Heller decision, incorporating the Second Amendment in a narrow 5-4 decision. However, the decision presents the thorny question of how far lawyers should go in advocating particular ideological views that may detrimental to their clients. The most clean-cut and powerful argument for incorporation of the Second Amendment is undoubtedly based on the decades of Supreme Court precedent incorporating various Bill of Rights protections under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, application of the Privileges or Immunities Clause might result in a broader and more unrestricted right to bear arms. This is the tension at the heart of the McDonald case.” (03/02/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/02/guns-before-the-court Filed under: 2AM Commentary and CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Spectator Author: Nicole Russell Posted on 03.01.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “You know the saying: Ignorance is bliss. Unfortunately for the American taxpayer, when it comes to the wind turbine industry, ignorance is not as blissful as it is infuriating. According to a new report by the Investigative Reporting Workshop (in coordination with ABC’s World News with Diane Sawyer and the Watchdog Institute), Obama can now add wind turbines to his growing list of failures within the stimulus package.” (03/01/10) Link: http://spectator.org/archives/2010/03/01/tilting-at-windmills Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Weekly Standard Author: Fred Barnes Posted on 03.01.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “President Obama spent seven hours last week acting like a committee chairman, not a president. Rather than preside over the nationally televised health care ’summit’ of Democratic and Republican members of Congress, Obama was a participant. He big-footed Democrats and responded to Republican statements himself. He talked and talked and talked, considerably more than anyone else and for a total of two hours. When Obama delivered a concluding monologue, the TV cameras panned to a drowsy and bored group of senators and House members, the Republicans especially. Did Obama lower the presidency to the level of mere legislator? Perhaps. But I think Obama’s behavior at the summit answers a separate question, one that’s lingered since he was elected more than 15 months ago. Is Obama the new FDR? The answer is no.” (for publication 03/08/10) Link: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/hes-no-fdr Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: WorldNetDaily Author: Ilana Mercer Posted on 03.01.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Mr. Akio Toyoda, the president of Toyota, could have achieved the brevity much-admired in his culture (and mine) had he responded thus to the invitation to appear before the congressional committee investigating the recall of 8 million of his vehicles: House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform’s invitation to Mr. Toyoda: ‘Dear Mr. Toyoda, we will be sitting between 11 a.m. And 5 p.m. on February the 24th.’ Toyoda’s putative reply: ‘Akio Toyoda likewise.’ To complete the one-two punch, Mr. Toyoda’s second in command, Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motors North America, ought to have sent each of his would-be Democrat and Republican inquisitors a short note, in large typeface, preferably with pop-up pictures.” (02/26/10) Link: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=126220 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox Business News Author: John Stossel Posted on 02.28.10 by Steve Trinward “In this week’s show ‘Hands Off My Meds,’ I ask: Why does the DEA, in its zeal to prosecute the disastrous War on Drugs, frequently harass and prosecute doctors who prescribe pain medicine with opiates — legal medications like oxycontin, vicodin and percocet — to patients with chronic pain? Ron Libby, a professor of political science at the University of North Florida and author of The Criminalization of Medicine: America’s War on Doctors, says this government crackdown leaves thousands of patients in pain. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons says this to its members: ‘If you’re thinking about getting into pain management using opioids as appropriate: DON’T. Forget what you learned in medical school — drug agents [from the DEA] now set medical standards.’ The DEA declined to be interviewed.” [editor’s note: I saw this, up close and personal, with a former GF whose very life depended on pain meds; Stossel’s just scratching the surface of the horrors here - SAT] (02/26/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/ykplxes Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: Gene J. Koprowski Posted on 02.28.10 by Steve Trinward “Al Gore won a Nobel Prize and an Oscar for his film, An Inconvenient Truth. But in the last three months, as global warming has gone from a scientific near-certitude to the subject of satire, Gore — the public face of global warming — has been silent on the topic. The former vice president apparently finds it inconvenient even to answer calls to testify before the U.S. Senate. … On Tuesday, Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe — a prominent skeptic of global warming theory and the Republican leader of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee — issued a request for Gore to come testify on global warming. … Gore has yet to respond.” (02/27/10) Link: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/02/26/inconvenient-truth-for-al-gore Filed under: CANDi Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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