Opinion Forum

Health Care Reform This Year?

June 20th, 2009

In How Obama could lose health fight at Politico.com, Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei state: President Obama’s campaign for health care reform by this fall, once considered highly likely to succeed, suddenly appears in real jeopardy. Top White House advisers, especially chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, are still privately predicting massive changes to the health care system [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Congress, Democrats, health care reform, Obama
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Apologies and Reparations

June 19th, 2009

The Senate has just passed a resolution apologizing to African-Americans for slavery. The House passed their version of the apology in an earlier resolution. A major difference between the two is that the Senate resolution specifically states that the apology is not a basis for slavery reparations. The House version didn’t address reparations. There have [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: apology, reparations, slavery
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

Health Care Reform

June 19th, 2009

Health care reform is the most far-reaching, expensive, and ambitious item on President Obama’s visionary domestic agenda. In terms of cost, everything else pales in comparison. Not only would it cost far more than we can afford, it would significantly change American society in ways that aren’t wholly predictable. Most Americans accept that something needs to [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: health care reform, Obama
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

President Obama and Iran

June 19th, 2009

The beginning and end of Charles Krauthammer’s column in The Washington Post: Millions of Iranians take to the streets to defy a theocratic dictatorship that, among its other finer qualities, is a self-declared enemy of America and the tolerance and liberties it represents. The demonstrators are fighting on their own, but they await just a word [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Iran, Obama
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Selling Our House and Moving

June 18th, 2009

We put our house up for sale last month. We are trying to get to another area that has a better school district. The schools here aren’t very challenging. We’re doing lots of things to get the house ready to sell. We had a small living room, so we built a bigger one last year. [...]

Articles written by Amber
Tags: friends, home sale, moving, school
Categories: Life | Comments (3) | Home

Gun Battle Continues

June 17th, 2009

The gun control battle isn’t over yet, but the end is getting closer. The Supreme Court is likely to hear a case of some sort before too long that will resolve the question of whether the Second Amendment applies to the states. It may surprise some that not all of the amendments known as the Bill of [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: gun control, Law, Second Amendment, Supreme Court
Categories: History, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Obama’s Insult From Tennessee

June 17th, 2009

Some people are just too stupid to be entrusted with an e-mail account; Sherri Goforth is one of these people. Sherri Goforth is an aide to Tennessee Republican state Sen. Diane Black. Yesterday she sent an e-mail to several colleagues with the above picture featuring all of our former presidents in “dignified and stately positions” [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: insult, Obama, Tennessee
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

The Slippery Slope to Statism

June 17th, 2009

Obama has never once mentioned the fact that it was the Federal government’s systematic manipulation of the financial and housing markets that led to today’s crisis.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: economy, Obama, statism
Categories: Economics, History, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

Aunt Mertie’s Moonshiners

June 16th, 2009

Carbon Hill, Alabama, 1951, population about 3000, mostly coal miners and farmers. Right smack dab in the middle of the Bible belt, a fact that at times created some unique problems. Southern folks worked hard and most the time for six-day weeks. Sunday was the Lord’s day, period. Friday and Saturday nights, on the other hand, were [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: kids, moonshine
Categories: Humor, Life | Comments (2) | Home

Straight Talk from Lebanon

June 15th, 2009

Tom Friedman is a political writer who generally tells it straight, regardless of petty ideological concerns. He was in Lebanon recently for the elections, and two of his columns in The New York Times on those elections are worth reading and thinking about: From Ballots Over Bullets, June 9: As more than one Lebanese whispered to me: Without George [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Arab, democracy, elections, Friedman, Lebanon
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Cometh the Blond Bombshell

June 15th, 2009

— WARNING — WARNING — WARNING — WARNING — WARNING — WARNING — Warning for liberals — quotes from Ann Coulter follow! Exposure to her thinking may make your head explode or at least cause severe psychological damage! OK. Now we can proceed. I try to read political opinions from both ends of the spectrum — I [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Coulter, Muslims, Obama
Categories: Humor, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Politics and Bases

June 14th, 2009

We’ve become preoccupied, if not obsessed, with the concept of “political base.” Supposedly, politicians are obligated to be highly aware of, take care of, and for heaven’s sake not offend their “base.” This is more than just their supporters — fellow members of their political parties, independents who are on their side, even big-money contributors who [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Democrats, leadership, Republicans
Categories: Politics | Comments (5) | Home

The Palin/Letterman Spat

June 13th, 2009

“Palin didn’t rise to the bait when Letterman derided the Alaska governor’s ‘slutty flight attendant look’ on Monday’s show. But she did object when Letterman, satirizing the Palin family’s visit to New York and a Yankees game, said: ‘There was one awkward moment during the seventh inning stretch. Her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.’”

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: joke, Letterman, Palin
Categories: Arts, Humor, Media | Comments (8) | Home

Politics As Usual

June 12th, 2009

According to reports in The Washington Post and other media, President Obama has fired Gerald Walpin, the Inspector General for AmeriCorps and other national service programs. According to the Post’s report, Obama’s move follows an investigation by IG Gerald Walpin finding misuse of federal grants by a nonprofit education group led by Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Grassley, IG, Johnson, Obama, Walpin
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Pondering America in the World

June 12th, 2009

I really don’t care what either Prince Saud al-Faisal or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei think of America and have no interest in making them happy because caring what they think and making them happy, in the world of the Middle-East, are both signs of weakness — and weakness is just what President Obama displayed to the Muslim world. A dog showing his belly to the pack!

The paradox is, both al-Faisal and Khamenei have a valid point. The United States has indeed involved itself in too many contentious situations, in too many parts of the world when our involvement could have been avoided. We have engaged in a self-anointed mission to spread Democracy around the world — its an effort that has gained us very little and has cost us far too much.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: al-Faisal, democracy, Khamenei, Muslim, Obama
Categories: Politics | Comments (2) | Home

PoliticsDaily

June 12th, 2009

AOL’s MediaGlow, one of their three core businesses, has generated a new website that features political news and commentary, PoliticsDaily.com. The Editor in Chief is Melinda Henneberger, an experienced journalist who was a New York Times reporter for 10 years in their Washington and Rome bureaus. This seems to be yet another example of the inexorable evolution of [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Politics Daily
Categories: Media, News | Comments (1) | Home

Quirky Justices

June 11th, 2009

Amid the microscopic examination of everything Judge Sonia Sotomayor ever did or said, to include what parts of the pig she enjoys eating, it’s nice to see some reality injected into the conversation. When Arrogance Takes the Bench, a New York Times article by Noah Feldman, does just that. Feldman, a professor at Harvard Law [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: justices, Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Categories: History, Life, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Reverend Wright Is Back

June 11th, 2009

In case there’s someone who hasn’t heard of him, Reverend Jeremiah Wright is President Obama’s former pastor and mentor of over 20 years. Wright’s racist, anti-semitic, and anti-American rants did serious damage to the campaign before Obama threw him under the bus. He’s back. At the annual Hampton University Ministers’ Conference in Virginia, Wright was interviewed [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Obama, Wright
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (6) | Home

Chicken at the Movies

June 11th, 2009

A man approached the window of the movie theater with a chicken on his shoulder and asked for two tickets. The girl at the counter wanted to know who was going in with him. He replied, “Well, my pet chicken, of course!” “I’m sorry,” The girl told him. “We don’t allow animals in the theater.” [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: chicken
Categories: Humor | Comments (5) | Home

Paglia on the Obama Speech

June 10th, 2009

Camille Paglia writes a monthly column at Slate.com. Her column for this month was published today. As I’ve said before, “She is what an intellectual should be — an intelligent, educated person who has the courage and strength of mind to breach all boundaries of orthodoxy.” In this column she deconstructs President Obama’s speech to the Muslim world [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Muslims, Obama, Paglia
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

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