Krauthammer on Obama’s new nuclear weapons policy: is the policy insane or ridiculous?
Charles Krauthammer voices his views on Obama’s new nuclear weapons policy on FOX News. Is the policy insane or ridiculous? You decide.
Entries Tagged as 'politics & government'
Tomfoolery
That clown prince of the Senate, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma — where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain — is up to his old tricks again. Not content to simply rubberstamp unfunded spending like the rest of his esteemed colleagues, Senator Coburn has blocked the extension of federal unemployment benefits. And because of this Easter Scrooge, 200,000 people this week will be without their dole. [Read more →]
Top ten Republican National Committee excuses for blowing $2,000 in campaign contributions at Voyeur West Hollywood
10. “Ever since Sarah Palin started wearing leather motorcycle jackets and leather skirts, we’re really into S&M.”
9. “We didn’t think we’d get caught.”
8. “Rush Limbaugh told us a guy there could score us some Oxycontin.”
7. “We thought we’d create our own ‘Self-Stimulus Package’.”
6. “We’re just a bunch of rich arrogant jerks, big deal!”
5. “We were only trying to prevent unnecessary layoffs in the Stripper Industry.”
4. “We took a real spanking in 2008, and got to like it.”
3. “Why should Democrats have all the fun?”
2. “We thought the club’s lesbian role play might help us with any ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ legislation.”
1. “Ever since Republican Senator Larry Craig got busted for lewd conduct in an airport’s men’s room, the GOP has been desperately trying to re-establish its ‘hetero cred’.”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Machiavelli: Analysis from beyond the grave
It has been an interesting two weeks of existence we’ve had here in America, hasn’t it? Ever since the Democrats gave America’s Tina the Ike Turner Treatment by passing health care in the face of majority opposition, we’ve had the Democrats give us a victory lap, settle down, look at their poll numbers, and apparently they’ve begun to feel something similar to the uncomfortable state of being which accompanies the passing of a kidney stone the size of your average brick.
Servile Hack Watch: ‘Time’ editor declares Obama’s like Mandela, only better
One of the reasons for which we can be grateful for the 2008 election campaign is that it revealed to young people who might have been contemplating a few years at journalism school what a waste of time, money and effort such an ‘education’ represents. [Read more →]
Out of the closet and into the Klan robe?
Charlie Crist’s having a rough stretch. Florida’s governor is seeking the Republican nomination for the Senate and finding opponent Marco Rubio much tougher than expected in a race that isn’t volatile so much as manic-depressive, with Crist having both led and trailed by over 30 points in the polls. Crist has been deemed too liberal by much of the party base, putting a man who once fancied himself a future President on the verge of a likely career-ending defeat. Oh, and many people believe he’s secretly gay. [Read more →]
Exaggeration nation: Political sex scandals
In light of the debacle over a Republican shindig at a L.A. bondage club, and Democratic congressman Eric Massa’s recently disclosed penchant for giving staffers a tickle, the Daily Beast asks: Which party has more sex scandals?
And the Daily Beast answers. It’s the G.O.P by a landslide!
Political labels pose the danger of dehumanizing those you happen to disagree with
One commonly writes about something because one is interested in it, and one commonly reads about something for the same reason. But the two lines of interest do not necessarily coincide: What I find interesting to write about you may not find interesting to read about. Write a weekly column and you’ll see what I mean.
Judging by the comments, the column I wrote last week garnered more interest than I expected it would. [Read more →]
Did the Democrats just give us health care reform, or a bunch of ShamWow cloths
That’s how the Democrats are responding to the critics who note that they just jammed Health Care Reform down our throats, in open defiance of the majority opposition, in a manner that was neither democratic, nor republican.
A solution for the teabagging problem
The teabaggers have crossed the line.
Just as “free speech” doesn’t entitle someone to scream “fire” in a theater, it doesn’t entitle them to scream “socialism” by the Capitol. The effusive hatred displayed toward those brave legislators who seized America’s health care system must come to an end. For, left unchecked, it can destroy our nation and its newly-interpreted principles. Congress must act — as the vanguard of the people — to wipe out this vermin from our body politic. And it can best do this by reestablishing the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA). [Read more →]
Cerebral commander-in-chief? Not so much
Today I read Peggy Noonan’s regular piece in the Wall Street Journal, The Heat Is On. We May Get Burned. Normally I appreciate Ms. Noonan’s insightful and carefully crafted missives. However, today was one more straw on a camel’s back that’s about to break. Ms. Noonan, like so many others, refers to the people in the current administration, including the man at the top, as “so bright.” Ahem. I beg to differ. [Read more →]
Comparing the President to Hitler — Pot, meet Kettle
Perhaps up until this point I might have said nothing would surprise me. I mean, hell, we live in a crazy world where wild animals are at war with us, earthquakes are moving the Earth’s axis and God can speak to us through the Billboard top 100 chart. But then, on Sunday night what is commonly called Obamacare passed the US House of Representatives.
Currently I’m in Germany. I’m here on business and will be leaving soon. So I found it an apropos setting to write this missive. Being in Germany, you might think I am relatively removed from the fervor (good or bad) over the “historic” moment. Not so. [Read more →]
The health care debacle
Face it folks, you’re going to get sick and tired of me writing about the new health care law. I don’t think it’s Constitutional, no matter what precedents you can dig up out of some dusty old tome of law. Common sense will tell you that this is a gross encroachment of liberty by government, all in the name of power. The issue has divided this country more thoroughly than anything since the Civil War. I don’t know what it’s like in the cities, but this country boy can feel the anger and fear in small town America.
This doesn’t end well, no matter what happens. If it isn’t repealed, rural America is going to go crazy, and if it is repealed, the cities will be overwhelmed by rioting. But let me present the only side of the story I’m familiar with, the side of the story that I live…
Unintended consequences: The parallels of the NFL overtime changes and health care reform
What do Congress and the NFL have in common? They’ve both just passed significant new rule changes to correct what they view as systemic problems that result in unjust or unfavorable outcomes. Also: they both have not considered how tinkering with incentives can drastically change behavior, and in doing so, create new unforeseen problems. [Read more →]
Insurance companies aren’t evil (just greedy and incompetent)
A few years ago I attended a panel discussion on health care reform at Princeton University. While a number of options were offered and often violently debated, there was one point on which every panelist concurred: our insurance companies waste shocking amounts of money (we’re talking Eastern European Communist levels here). In particular, they like paperwork. They really like paperwork, so much so the panelists agreed they choose to spend roughly 30% of every dollar on it (I’ve since read up on this and found that estimates vary as expected, but the lowest paperwork figure I located was 7.6% or well over $100 billion a year, which is horrible enough, thank you). Throw in the cash spent on TV ads and executive salaries and the like and they squander a huge amount of loot before they deliver any actual health care. Not to mention they’re determined to earn massive profits. [Read more →]
Healthcare law sounds good, but…
So there it is, folks! There will be last ditch efforts from republicans and state attorney generals to nullify the law, but the healthcare overhaul in America is now in motion. My main criticism of the bill was that we might be throwing money at the problem. No one read the bill. No one understood it. And there didn’t seem to be any distinguishable solutions.
But now that it is law, there seems to be more details. And I like what I hear. There are a lot of essential provisions without too much government control. However, there are still a few loose ends. First, more people will be covered, but will more people treated? There is a difference. Second, we cannot afford this. Doesn’t that mean anything anymore? It makes you think… [Read more →]
Political labels are invariably misleading
Even wise and learned people are capable of saying stupid things. I was reminded of this recently when I came upon something once said by Jacques Barzun — who is certainly wise and learned enough: “A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.”
It is actually hard to know quite what to think of this. [Read more →]
The road just taken: What the right doesn’t get about health care reform
The health care reform bill that passed the House of Representatives last night is flawed and adulterated; but for millions of Americans who aren’t stockholders of insurance companies, failure to pass it would have been disastrous. That failure would have led to the continued spiraling out of control of health-care costs (and perhaps, ten or 15 years from now, a better solution, a single-payer system). But the bill is a start on the right road, not the wrong road. [Read more →]
American royalty marching on the broad road to destruction
Stalin is reported to have said something along the lines of, “If you know the rape is coming, you might as well enjoy it.” To those members of Congress and the current administration, who now gloat over their pyrrhic victory, let me advise another text, this one from the Book of Proverbs, 16:18. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” [Read more →]
Exaggeration nation: Gog and Magog
On Saturday, Republican leader John Boehner predicted that the passage of the health care bill would bring about “Armageddon.” Boehner is Roman Catholic (alma mater: Xavier University) so I don’t think that he meant my favorite WWE event or my third-favorite Bruce Willis movie. Nope, this is the Armageddon — the big one. And yesterday the bill passed. Yikes!
As a public service, I looked up how things go from here on in, according to the King James Bible. Here’s what to expect.
