The phony talk of “green shoots” worked for a while as the administration and business establishment united in misleading the public about recovery prospects to induce it to spend. As they say you cannot fool all of the people all of the time. So, not surprisingly while people expressed a growing confidence, they acted cautiously.
The Western media projects on the demonstrators in Iran our best hopes and wishes. It sees another “color” revolution, in the wake of which the people will overthrow the regime, and a new democracy will arise. I say, very unlikely. The color revolutions succeeded—to the extent that they did—because the police and the army either joined the uprising or refused to suppress it. In Iran, the media did find a few cops who were nice to the demonstrators, but most were brutal. And the sad fact is that in short run, brute force tends to win.
College for me was a starting point – an intellectual and spiritual awakening to a life of asking questions, looking for answers, and seeking direction. It was through the portal of higher education – this “wardrobe” if you will – that I entered a world of adventure, whereby, I began to turn over every stone in the pursuit of something trustworthy and immutable; something true and absolute; something worthy of my commitment and my allegiance.Along the way I discovered that a classical liberal arts education is one that, in its purest form, pursues all questions with a paradoxical balance of confidence and humility.
After the 9/11 attacks, Americans were promised that the World Trade Center would be re-built and the Deutsche Bank Building, damaged by same, would be torn down. Almost eight years later, neither task has been accomplished. So what’s this got to do with the cap-and-trade bill? Plenty.
One day in 1984, at the height of his fame, Michael Jackson made a visit to the White House. President and Nancy Reagan may not have dug his music, but they understood the power Mr. Jackson commanded as a common pop-cultural touchstone for just about everyone else. Mr. Jackson had given the White House permission to use his smash hit “Beat It” in a campaign to halt teen drinking and driving, and the Reagans wanted to bestow on him a public-safety award and their personal thanks.
Though he says he “crossed the line” with other women, Mark Sanford says he never “crossed the ultimate line” with anyone other than his Argentine mistress. By “the ultimate line,” I’m assuming he means the Equator.
At one point Michael Jackson had a rabbi and was studying to become Jewish before deciding to convert to Islam. What a choice! It’s like, “Hm, do I want to be a Jew…or an anti-Semite? Jew, anti-Semite…Jew, anti-Semite…” I guess in the end he decided that the latter was just morefun. [End.]
“I’m starting with the man in the mirror…If you wanna make the world a better place/Take a look at yourself and then make a change.”
-Michael Jackson, Man in the Mirror, 1988
Campaign slogans, political speeches, pop music, and even government web pages – Everywhere we turn we hear the echoes of monastic chants calling for change. Radio, television, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and even the antiquity of newsprint have all been inundated: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Change we can believe in. Change we need. Vote for Change. Change.gov. A Time for Change. Change in our Time…. “If you wanna make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and … Change!”
But is change always something to be celebrated or are there times where proclamations of change should be received with caution and concern? The answer lies in another question: Change from what to what? (more…)
A recent letter to the editor in our local paper suggested that our prison system is the country’s last legal form of slavery, and attaches a racial motive to California’s three-strikes law.
Within a week we’ve seen the untimely deaths of two cultural icons, the sentencing of our most heinous Ponzi schemer and the reversal of the Ricci case concerning discrimination against white firemen in New Haven. The overwhelming hype over Michael Jackson is spearheaded by the two most famous race vultures in America - Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton - two unelected demagogues who never miss an opportunity to glom on to someone else’s celebrity and cheapen any cause they touch. In this case, they’ve chosen a talented, even trail-blazing performer who was a drug-addicted anorexic at his demise but in life, clearly suffered from numerous other mental problems including pedophilia, body dysmorphic disorder and compulsive spending that surpassed the stratospheric bounds of hundreds of millions of dollars in income. It is unimaginable that this confused person should be held up as a tribute to anything other than musical talent. Michael Jackson didn’t see himself as Black; he changed his skin color, his hair, his facial features and was the custodial father to white children who had no biological relation to him. Yet the reverends Sharpton and Jackson have insinuated themselves as pallbearers to some implied black martyrdom with presumed racial overtones.
A new report by the Civitas think tank estimates that some 85 sharia courts currently operate in the United Kingdom, usually in mosques and behind closed doors. Many of their cases have to do with marriage or divorce. According to fatwas on websites of UK mosques, the courts are supposed to forbid Muslim women to marry non-Muslim men unless the latter convert. They are also supposed to grant custody of any male children over the age of seven to the father, regardless of other circumstances.
Within a week we’ve seen the untimely deaths of two cultural icons, the sentencing of our most heinous Ponzi schemer and the reversal of the Ricci case concerning discrimination against white firemen in New Haven. The overwhelming media hype concerning Michael Jackson is spearheaded by the two most famous race vultures in America - Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton - two unelected demagogues who never miss an opportunity to glom on to someone else’s celebrity and never fail to cheapen any cause they touch. In this case, they’ve chosen a talented, even trail-blazing performer who was a drug addicted anorexic at his demise but clearly suffered from numerous other mental problems including pedophilia, body dysmorphic disorder and compulsive spending that stratospherically surpassed the bounds of hundreds of millions of dollars in income. It is unimaginable that this confused person should be held up as a tribute to anything other than musical talent. Michael Jackson didn’t see himself as Black when he was alive; he changed his skin color and his features and was the custodial father to white children who had no biological relation to him. Yet the reverends Sharpton and Jackson have insinuated themselves as pallbearers to some implied black martyrdom with presumed racial overtones.
For Barack Obama, it has become woefully apparent that some meddling is “more equal” than other meddling. Ordinary Iraqi citizens protesting totalitarianism and getting killed for it? Let’s wait and see what happens. Honduras ousting a president attempting to illegally re-write the Country’s constitution? Illegal and a “terrible precedent.”
Words mean something. As human beings we stand alone in our use of language as our primary method of communication. We debate and we argue. We make speeches and we deliver sermons. We teach lessons. We pontificate, we preach, and we proclaim. We espouse liberal and conservative agendas ad infinitum. Our “bigger ideas” are framed and defended with emotion, passion, anger and indignation. We have confidence in our words and we resist any attempt of to co-op, twist or manipulate their meaning. We defend our words with tenacity. If they deceive we call them lies. If they embolden we call them inspiring. If they make promises we call them contracts. Words indeed mean something and history shows that they have the power to build nations, define religions, inspire revolutions, defend what is true or even hide what is false.
Good news. If Washington Institute’s David Pollock report on the Middle Eastern/Muslim reaction to events in Iran is to be trusted, Iranian opposition forces can expect some serious help. It is Saudi financial support, rather than Obama’s Cairo speech, that was behind the recent electoral victory of the anti-Syrian, anti-Hezbollah forces. The Saudis, unlike the Americans, have money, are willing to spend it and need to answer to no one.
Mary Bono Mack (CA); Michael Castle (DE); Mark Kirk (IL); Leonard Lance (NJ); Frank LoBiondo (NJ); John McHugh (NY); Dave Reichert (WA); Christopher Smith (NJ).
This July 4th, I have a wish. My wish is that a cure for Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) be found. A cure that will save over one million lives—the number currently lost to TBI each year. Many of those lives belong to our brave men and women in uniform. We live in the most advanced country in the world, and this gift should be used to end the pain of those who are suffering. As President Lincoln stated regarding veterans, “To care for him who shall have borne the battle.” We have a particular obligation to care for those injured in service to our country.
In the last century, conventional thinking was that women were unsuited for political leadership because they were overly emotional and prone to hysteria, a word that derives from the Greek “hutera” meaning uterus. You see the connection - hormones, pms, pre-partum, post-partum - women were a minefield of volatility and therefore not as rational and clear-thinking as men. Our hands had to be kept away from that red button in the White House and our national role models were strong Teddy Roosevelt/John Wayne types or feisty little fighters like Harry Truman and James Cagney. Marlon Brando changed the image of masculinity in this country; his body was sculpted, his face was chiseled but he was an emotional firecracker, capable of breaking down unpredictably and that was an androgynous conceit.
According to Osama Bin Laden, one of the principle reasons for the perpetration of the 9/11 atrocities was to cripple the American economy. He and al Qaeda needn’t have bothered. A feckless Congress and a clueless president are more than up to the job.
Much has been said, and justifiably so, about the role the poor Iranian economy plays in the current Iranian election crisis. Much less attention has been played to the role the global economic recession has already played in the rage sweeping the country and the role it is bound to play in its aftermath. Emad Gad, an Egyptian expert in international affairs, suggests that “Ahmadinejad will concentrate in the economic field to improve living conditions for his population after this crisis.”
A Wall Street Journal article about an unemployed woman living on less in New York City asks us to believe that previously, Rachel Rachelson was able to live in Manhattan, rent a summer house and car in the Hamptons, have a yearly vacation in Acapulco, shop “without qualms” at Bergdorf, own 140 pairs of shoes, eat out daily at trendy restaurants, have weekly manicures and expensive haircuts - drum roll please - on a salary of $57,000 a year. We are talking about 33 years from 1975 - 2008, assuming that she lost her job in the past year and assuming that the salary quoted represented what she earned most recently. Does this make any sense to anyone alive in New York in the 21rst century? Did a sloppy editor eliminate another digit that belonged in front of 57 because even a single person would have to earn at least $157,000 to attempt that lifestyle.
