Opinion Forum

Health Care Madness

July 17th, 2009

In the previous post, Jan Barry wrote about “socialized medicine,” that great bugaboo of conservatives. He effectively made the point that the present health care system, if it can be called that, often isn’t so great, and a new nationally standardized and controlled system might prove to be better. He drew valid parallels with military medical [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: health care
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Socialized Medicine

July 16th, 2009

The federal government is once again considering instituting a national health care plan, something first proposed by President Teddy Roosevelt more than a century ago. The problem is that many Americans are scared of getting dreaded “socialized medicine.” You know, like they have in Canada, where people have to wait for weeks to see a [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: health care, Medicare, socialized medicine
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Global Warming McCarthyism

July 16th, 2009

From Al Gore and Friends Create Climate of McCarthyism by Bjorn Lomborg: Discussions about global warming are marked by an increasing desire to stamp out “impure” thinking, to the point of questioning the value of democratic debate. But shutting down discussion simply means the disappearance of reason from public policy. In March, Al Gore’s science adviser [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Al Gore, global warming
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

What’s Good for the Goose….

July 16th, 2009

From an article today by John Fund in The Wall Street Journal: Senator Tom Coburn [R-OK] is a physician who until recently still went home to Oklahoma to deliver babies. He believes Congress should weigh the dangers of a nationalized health system much more seriously than it has. In the tradition of someone using a 2×4 [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Congress, health care
Categories: Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Rat Hunting

July 16th, 2009

Back many years ago when the South was for the most part more rural than city, the out-in-the-country setting created its own special problems. Rats and mice could get out of control pretty fast if the farmers got lax. Everything from traps to poison was used to combat the vermin. The use of traps caused [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: rat hunting, terriers
Categories: Humor, Life | Comments (2) | Home

Capping, Trading, and Self-Destructing

July 15th, 2009

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin attacked the Administration’s Cap and Trade proposal in a column in The Washington Post yesterday. She made some very valid, very important points about the problems with Cap and Trade, but her argument was focused on energy production. Here is my “top three” list of problems with Cap and Trade [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: cap-and-trade, Feldstein, Obama, Palin
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (5) | Home

The 10 Worst Presidents

July 14th, 2009

U.S. News & World Report has published an interesting article titled The 10 Worst Presidents. By following links from the article’s main page, you can find out how it was determined who were the 10 worst (with a short comment on each one), read a discussion about scholarly consensus on presidential rankings, and read an [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: presidents, rankings
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (3) | Home

Obama’s “Fine Print”

July 14th, 2009

Picking a president based on campaign promises is just as perilous an adventure as applying for that third credit card after the first two are maxed out. It doesn’t seem like you have any choice and you live on the hope that everything will work out all right.

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: American Dream, economy, employment
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (0) | Home

Schlesinger on Nuclear Weapons

July 13th, 2009

James R. Schlesinger is arguably the foremost nuclear strategist in America. As a former secretary of defense, energy secretary, director of the CIA, and lifelong scholar in the subject, he deserves to be listened to on issues involving nuclear weapons. In a recent Wall Street Journal interview, Schlesinger maintained that we can’t have and shouldn’t [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: disarmament, nuclear weapons, Obama, Schlesinger
Categories: Military, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Remembering Robert McNamara

July 12th, 2009

“McNamara’s War” is what a senator called America’s disastrous military invasion of Vietnam. Reading news items about Robert McNamara’s death this week at age 93, I remembered how wide the gulf was between a soldier and the Secretary of Defense, whose exalted place in the chain of command we had to know by heart, when [...]

Articles written by Jan Barry
Tags: McNamara, Vietnam
Categories: History, Military, Politics | Comments (4) | Home

Wisdom on the Economy

July 12th, 2009

Advice from an Economist Who Saw 1929 at Time.com is an interesting interview with Anna Schwartz. From the introduction to the interview: The Obama Administration should stop bailing out corporate disasters and abandon plans to move health care onto the backs of taxpayers. Tough talk from Anna Schwartz, a financial sage who has seen it [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Anna Schwartz, economy
Categories: Economics, Politics | Comments (2) | Home

Pioneer of Color Photography

July 11th, 2009

Sergey Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky was a Russian photographer who began a remarkable project in 1909. His goal was to record the huge, sprawling Russian empire in full color photographs. Prokudin-Gorsky was supported and funded by Tsar Nicholas II, whose support included a railroad car with a darkroom and permits that allowed access to all parts of [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: photography, Prokudin-Gorsky, Tolstoy
Categories: Arts, History | Comments (1) | Home

Obama’s Alternate Reality

July 11th, 2009

It’s apparent from President Obama’s weekly radio address (taped this week in Italy) that he does not see the same things that the majority of Americans see. We see unemployment at a near record high, and we see those who believed in Obama (according to every poll) losing their confidence. He sees a recovery act that [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: cap-and-trade, Obama, WPA
Categories: Economics, News, Politics | Comments (10) | Home

Games We Played

July 10th, 2009

I spend a great deal of time reliving my youth. Mostly wishing I could go back. Sure, there were things I’d change if offered the opportunity. One thing’s for sure, I’d have damn sure stashed back more money and in safer places. Marbles; it was marbles that got me thinking about bygone days. The marble games [...]

Articles written by Larry Ennis
Tags: games, kids
Categories: History, Life | Comments (3) | Home

Obama and Sarkozy Leching

July 10th, 2009

This photo has already been published everywhere. But I just couldn’t resist!

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: girl, Obama, Sarkozy
Categories: Life, Politics | Comments (12) | Home

Paglia on Palin, Hate Crimes

July 9th, 2009

Camille Paglia answers questions submitted by readers in her monthly column at Slate.com. The questions and answers are on Sarah Palin, loose comments on assassinations of and attacks on political figures, President Obama’s apparent attitude toward women’s rights, the power and limits of language, hate crimes legislation, perceptions of art as pornography, and commentary on several issues [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: hate crimes, Paglia, Palin
Categories: Media, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

Feed Me! Heal Me!

July 8th, 2009

Browsing through the comments section of an MSNBC article titled Congress: The centrist threat?, the subject of government-run health care came up. Many people displayed that “feed me,” “heal me,” “take care of me” attitude that shows how little they respect themselves and how little they care about the people who actually pay for their food, [...]

Articles written by Harvey Grund
Tags: medicine, nationalized healthcare, Obama
Categories: Life, News, Politics | Comments (14) | Home

Will Obama Betray Israel?

July 7th, 2009

Jeff Robbins wrote an interesting review and commentary on a new book at The Wall Street Journal Opinion Journal. Robbins’ comments are particularly relevant at a time when the Obama Administration, Democrats in general, and most of the media are taking a studied know-nothing approach to policy regarding Israel and problems in the Middle East. Despite [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Israel, Obama, Palestine, peace process
Categories: History, Politics | Comments (8) | Home

Free Speech and Flag Burning

July 5th, 2009

Eugene Volokh stated in an article on July 3: Congress is once again considering a constitutional amendment to ban the desecration of the American flag. The proposal, introduced this spring in the Senate by David Vitter (R., La.), and cosponsored by 20 other Republicans and Democrat Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, probably won’t get enough votes. Yet [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: flag burning, freedom of speech
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (7) | Home

Al Franken, Filibuster Buster

July 5th, 2009

Now that the Minnesota Supreme Court has resolved the Franken-Coleman election dispute, Al Franken will take his seat as the junior Senator from Minnesota, presumably during the coming week. There’s a lot of talk about the Democrats having a filibuster-proof 60-vote supermajority with Franken in the Senate. The fact is, it’s a pretty shaky supermajority. Of the [...]

Articles written by Tom Carter
Tags: Franken, Obama, Senate
Categories: News, Politics | Comments (1) | Home

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