Archive for the ‘Editorial’ Category

Teachable Moments

Friday, August 27th, 2010
Why we know socialism works for the few, not the many.


Is not there some old Harry Truman Democrat still around to advise the
new Democratic aristocracy to live it down a bit in these tough times?

After presidential calls for sacrifice in our rough days of
recession — and coming on the heels of the Gatsby-like Clinton wedding,
the H.M.S. Kerry, the Gore getaway in Montecito, and “John’s Room” —
the enormous movable feast of Michelle Obama’s from Marbella to
Martha’s Vineyard does not go well with “two nations,” “raise the bar,”
downright mean country,” and all the other progressive complaints.
What was that about one selfish America living one way and another less
fortunate America living quite another? More mundanely, who says a
life in government doesn’t pay?

Aristocrats: Raising the Bar on the Costa del Sol

The problem with Michelle Obama’s Marabella-to-Martha’s-Vineyard
August is not that the first family doesn’t deserve time off but that
Michelle, in the past, has gone on the record that the country’s elite
(of which she claimed not to be a part) had created one nation for
themselves and quite a different for most others — at least that’s how I
interpreted never having been proud of her country until the rise of
hope and change.

So the Versailles-like aura around her trips suggests that her
prior angst arose not because millions were not able to share the
lifestyles of the elite but that she herself had not yet quite partaken
in the sort of life she felt she deserved — which she is now
apparently enjoying to the fullest. The fact that her Costa del Sol
trip coincides with hard times back in the states, comes on the heels
of the Kerry yacht and the Clinton wedding, and clashes with her
husband’s anti-wealthy rhetoric (e.g., “at some point you’ve made enough
money”) makes it all the more weird, both for her adminstration’s
equality-of-result politics and for the larger liberal narrative of
talking truth to power.

Read More…..


NRO’s The Corner

American Thinker: Israel, the Worlds Dirty Harry

Wednesday, June 9th, 2010

With the recent “peace flotilla” incident, we have yet another Arab-Israeli dust-up. It’s been going on as long as I’ve been alive, and we can expect “more of the same” for the foreseeable future.

I reflexively side with Israel — every time. Why do I, though? I am not a Jew. I don’t know many Jews, either. I have a couple of Jewish acquaintances, but no close Jewish friends.

What about national security? For all the talk we hear about how Israel is an “ally” of the U.S., the fact is that we have no American military bases there, and American troops have never fought alongside Israelis in any of the numerous Arab-Israeli wars. Unlike Muslim Turkey and Muslim Albania, Israel is not a member of the NATO collective-security alliance. And of course, Israel has no oil to sell us, unlike the Kuwaitis or the Saudis, both of whom we have fought to defend.

American Thinker: Israel, the Worlds Dirty Harry.

http://www.americanthinker.com/

Volatile euro drives markets down as China demands international response | Mail Online

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

If the euro fails, then Europe fails. If we do not avert this danger, then the consequences are incalculable.’

World markets fell sharply once again today amid fears over the European debt crisis – and the lack of political co-operation to contain it.

The worries left most of the world’s leading indexes now trading below where they started 2010.


The VIX index, which charts the volatility of the U.S. equities markets, is showing levels of volatility not seen since periods of the 2008/2009 crash.


They are currently on par with the instability seen in the markets after the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

Volatile euro drives markets down as China demands international response | Mail Online.

Mail Online

Are we headed toward a global trade war?

Saturday, March 20th, 2010

Are we headed toward a global trade war? Maybe so, judging from the rhetoric that is being thrown around by some big names. The issue is whether the United States should try to remedy its trade deficit by forcing China to make its currency—and hence its exports—more expensive.

Paul Krugman, the U.S. economist and Nobel winner, is one of those talking tough. “It’s time to take a stand” against China’s currency peg with the U.S. dollar, he says. He’s urging Congress to name China as a currency manipulator and threaten it with tariffs of 25% on any Chinese goods entering the United States.

Read Full Article…..

http://www.nationalpost.com/

Drug-resistant TB at record levels worldwide, the WHO says

Saturday, March 20th, 2010


An estimated 440,000 people had multi-drug resistant tuberculosis in 2008 and a third of them died as the new variant of the TB mycobacterium continues to spread, the World Health Organization said Thursday. Nearly half of the cases were in China and India, which have been hit hardest by the outbreak. But in some areas of the world, especially three provinces in Russia, more than one in every four cases of tuberculosis are the result of the hard-to-treat strain, according to the report.

Worldwide, there were an estimated 9.4 million cases of TB and 1.8 million deaths, so the drug-resistant forms remain a relatively small problem. But experts fear that they will continue to spread, displacing the drug-susceptible strains and greatly complicating treatment and increasing its cost.

Read Full Report…..

http://latimes.com/

Greek bailout drives rift in European ‘brotherhood – The Globe and Mail

Sunday, March 7th, 2010

Demonstrators in Athens denounce their government’s recent economic austerity measures. Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images

German response to Greece’s emergency is another humiliation in an increasingly nasty war between Europe’s North and Southvia

As Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou and German Chancellor Angela Merkel prepared for a crisis meeting in Berlin Friday, a retired bank clerk named Yannis Pannousakis and a dozen supporters blocked the entrance to a German electronics franchise in downtown Athens, handing out leaflets showing Ms. Merkel in an SS uniform.

Greece will ask for European assistance Friday to cover borrowing costs and avert a default that could threaten the stability of the euro, though Ms. Merkel and senior European Union officials have been increasingly unwilling to commit to a bailout. The Berlin meeting comes as Greece helped to reassure markets with the successful sale of a 10-year bond to raise €5-billion Thursday, a day after Mr. Papandreou imposed a drastic set of salary cuts, hiring and pension freezes and tax hikes to cut the deficit.

Greek bailout drives rift in European ‘brotherhood – The Globe and Mail.

Doug Saunders

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Chinese see U.S. debt as weapon in Taiwan dispute – Washington Times

Friday, March 5th, 2010

Taiwan arms pique military


China’s military stepped up pressure on the United States on Monday by calling for a government sell-off of U.S. debt securities in retaliation for recent arms sales to Taiwan.

A group of senior Chinese military officers also said in state-controlled media interviews that Beijing’s leaders should boost defense spending and expand force deployments in the wake of the Pentagon’s announcement last month of a new $6.4 million arms package for the island state claimed by Beijing.

via Chinese see U.S. debt as weapon in Taiwan dispute – Washington Times.

By 

American Thinker: Family Breakdown and the Nation’s Pocketbook

Saturday, February 20th, 2010

In the lobby of the Department of Health and Human Services is a large bronze sculpture of a solitary woman playing with her three children. That sculpture is called “Happy Mother.”
Nothing better illustrates what’s wrong with American culture today than the philosophy behind that sculpture — that fathers are extraneous. Yet that myth is the basis of forty years of failure by the leftist research communities to honestly report on the problem of fatherless families.
Many social scientists now agree: A loving mother and father within a committed marriage is the very best foundation for the family, for the economy, and for the nation. Yet currently, about forty percent of American children are born out of wedlock. That fact affects everyone and all of American culture. Though many have tried, there is no way to separate the social and economic issues; they are intertwined. Family problems always hit our pocketbooks — hard!

Family Breakdown and the Nation’s Pocketbook

By Janice Shaw Crouse

via American Thinker: Family Breakdown and the Nation’s Pocketbook.

SOMETHING caused the Creator God to decide to create MAN on this planet. Few indeed know what it was and what the PURPOSE for humanity’s presence really is. WHERE are We going, and what is the way?

The Family – God’s Plan for Mankind

Church of God Faithful Flock

The Obama Spell Is Broken

Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Unlike this president, John Kennedy was an ironist who never fell for his own mystique.


The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation’s faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

Read Full Article…..

By FOUAD AJAMI
The WallStreet Journal

Massachusetts Earthquake Puts Everything in Play

Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

Scott Brown’s stunning electoral victory in Massachusetts yesterday confirms to the world what we have known all along: Patriotism and common sense are alive and well. Real Americans remain a majority in this country, and the massively-funded, corrupt Democrat machine, engorged with our tax dollars, radical billionaire money, and lock-step union support, cannot buy elections even in hardcore Democrat states once the sleeping giant has awoken.

And make no mistake about it: We are wide awake!

The Democrats were certainly hamstrung by choosing an impossibly bad candidate. Martha Coakley made a fool of herself repeatedly, yet through it all carried herself with an astonishing sense of conceited entitlement, seemingly contemptuous of even having to campaign at all. Meanwhile, her campaign took on an air of ugly thuggishness. Two scenes captured on video during this short campaign say it all. Everyone has seen the first one, where a reporter is pushed to the ground by a Coakley supporter while she does nothing to stop it. Remember, she is the Massachusetts attorney general. The second one has received less attention, but is even more telling: a female reporter getting thrown out of a Coakley campaign office with shouts of “Nazi.” Someone even used the F-bomb. What class acts!

Read Full Article…..

By James Simpson
http://www.americanthinker.com