July 31st, 2009
Colonel Timothy Reese recently wrote a devastating memorandum, quoted in full at ForeignPolicy.com, regarding actual conditions in Iraq from a realistic military perspective. COL Reese should know — he’s the chief of the Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, Multinational Division-Baghdad, Iraq. Michael Gordon reported on the memo in The New York Times, providing a link to the full [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Iraq, war, withdrawal
Categories: Military, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home
July 30th, 2009
Rep. Eric Cantor, (R-VA) wrote that just over a year ago, Candidate Obama said: The biggest problems that we’re facing right now have to do with George Bush trying to bring more and more power into the executive branch and not go through Congress at all. And that’s what I intend to reverse when I’m [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: czars, Obama, White House
Categories: Politics | Comments (3) | Home
July 28th, 2009
In a scathing critique of health care coverage by America’s news media, the current issue of the Columbia Journalism Review contends that “this year’s health-care debate sounds like the one in 1993.” That debate produced the Clinton administration’s proposed reforms that were politically dead on arrival. “With few exceptions … the press has done little [...]
Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: health care, Medicare, single-payer
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home
July 27th, 2009
Imagine being a kid with Tourette syndrome; the muscles in your body and your face seem to have minds of their own, you make noises — sometimes alarmingly loud noises — that you do not intend to make. Perhaps worse than the disease you feel alone; people are scared of you because they don’t understand Tourettes; the adults want to shield their children from you and most of the other kids think you’re weird and funny and, in the school yard, they gather around you and laugh at you and imitate your tics.
Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: kids, Tourette syndrome
Categories: Life, News | Comments (3) | Home
July 26th, 2009
The Hubble Space Telescope got some amazing shots of the aftermath of the collision between a celestial body of some sort and the planet Jupiter. Check out this report from Fox News. They estimate that the object was up to a few football fields in size. The photos in the link show a massive, dark gash [...]
Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: collision, Hubble, Jupiter
Categories: News | Comments (4) | Home
July 26th, 2009
If we can get congress to (1) trash that abominable, bureaucratic mess that is working its way through the legislature, (2) start listening to their constituents instead of the Obama-controlled robots that are in charge, and (3) understand that the government is the real problem, we might get some intelligent healthcare reform.
Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: health care, Obamacare, petition
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (4) | Home
July 25th, 2009
As I indicated a couple of days ago, my primary disagreement with nationalized health care is philosophical. For those who don’t care much for philosophy, here’s something to chew on from the BBC. If you want the best odds of surviving cancer, you should probably want to get it in the United States, and not anywhere [...]
Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: health care, taxes
Categories: Economics, Life, Politics | Comments (6) | Home
July 25th, 2009
When President Obama visited the UK he was quite a hit, as evidenced by the wall-to-wall news coverage, but they, as well as we, have had a better chance to digest his policies, and it seems to be common knowledge that Obama’s once brilliant aura is beginning to dim. A scathing article in the London [...]
Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: Obama, UK
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (0) | Home
July 24th, 2009
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good [...]
Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: economy, minimum wage, small business
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (1) | Home
July 24th, 2009
According to Rasmussen Reports today, President Obama’s approval index has fallen to an all-time low of -8 (see the article for how that’s calculated). And there’s more bad news for the President: – In terms of overall approval of Obama’s performance, 49 percent say they at least somewhat approve. This is the first time that number [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: approval, Obama, poll
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home
July 24th, 2009
From Why Obamacare Is Sinking by Charles Krauthammer in The Washington Post: [W]hy is it … that in this grand health-care debate we hear not a word about one of the worst sources of waste in American medicine: the insane cost and arbitrary rewards of our malpractice system? When a neurosurgeon pays $200,000 a year for [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: health care, trial lawyers
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (2) | Home
July 23rd, 2009
The few facts presented in this post certainly represent insufficient reason to accuse anyone of anything but just from the information in the Metro International News quote above, the other facts about Professor Gates and what we know of Sergeant Crowley, one can start to get a picture of what might have transpired in the Gates house last Thursday. I certainly have a scenario in mind, but it would be inappropriate to share it based on what we know.
Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: Cambridge, Professor Gates
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (9) | Home
July 23rd, 2009
Does President Obama know what’s in the voluminous bills Congress is wrestling with these days? We already know that few, if any, members of Congress read the entire bills; some probably read none of them. They’re extremely long and sometimes distributed in pieces just before votes. Moreover, the public has no reasonable opportunity to read or understand them before [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: health care, Obama
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (1) | Home
July 22nd, 2009
There are several problems with a federal takeover of health care. Some of these problems are issues of pragmatism, but they are largely issues of philosophy. The first problem is that doing so worsens the logical contradiction that already exists within the welfare state. The federal government is going to take, by force or coercion, [...]
Articles written by Brian Bagent
Tags: government power, health care, taxes
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (21) | Home
July 21st, 2009
Richard Cohen is one of my favorite columnists, not because I always agree with him but because it’s usually interesting to see what he has to say. His column in The Washington Post on July 20 caught my attention because he compared Sonia Sotomayor, soon to warm a chair on the Supreme Court, and Antonin [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Scalia, Sotomayor, Supreme Court
Categories: Politics | Comments (0) | Home
July 20th, 2009
Let’s take a few minutes away from trivia like health care reform, cap-and-trade, and economic woes to think about something really important. The Royal Horticultural Society of the UK has just decreed that in a competition to select the ugliest plant in the world, “the spectacular corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum) [was] voted the flower most foul.” [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: RHS, ugliest flower
Categories: Life, News | Comments (8) | Home
July 20th, 2009
There’s an excellent post at Clarissa’s Blog on the disturbing tendency to over-medicate children with anti-psychotic drugs. The focus is on Dr. Joseph Biederman, a child psychiatrist and arrogant Harvard professor who has become the godfather of the movement to drug kids — some as young as two years old — who often have symptoms no more serious than inattention, minor acts of [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: children, drugs
Categories: Economics, Life, News | Comments (2) | Home
July 19th, 2009
By Tom Carter The Columbus, GA Ledger-Enquirer reported recently on a lawsuit filed by Major Stefan Frederick Cook, a reserve officer contesting his deployment to Afghanistan. This is another act in the long-running conspiracy-theorist drama about President Obama’s birth and citizenship. This theory holds that there is substantial reason to doubt his citizenship and eligibility to be president. [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: birth certificate, citizenship, Obama
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (8) | Home
July 18th, 2009
Bradley A. Smith in an article at Politico.com: It’s a party in crisis – lagging in the polls, it is out of ideas, its congressional leadership is highly unpopular, its policies failing, and a huge portion of its base consists of irreconcilable extremists. I’m, talking, of course, about the Democrats. … Democrats held a 7 point lead [...]
Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Democrats, Republicans
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (2) | Home
July 18th, 2009
I just started a new vampire series called the “House of Night” series. There are five books in the series. I bought the whole series at Barnes and Noble because it was under the section that said, “People who like the ‘Twilight Saga’.” So, I thought I should try it! The first book is called Marked. [...]
Articles written by Amber
Tags: House of Night, Marked
Categories: Arts, Life | Comments (0) | Home
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