Archive for August, 2010

Dacia Nichol Taylor

Sorry to sound like a broken record here, but Russia is really doing a disservice for the proponents of the new STOP…er…START.  Wait.  Is it still a bad thing when you’re sleeping with somebody else’s enemy?  A matter of perspective perhaps, but the only perspective that matters here says “yes”.

Rewriting history.

I wonder if Putin and Medvedev fell for the non-agression pact idea again when they decided to help Ahmadinkyjerk with their nuclear fuel rods.  Like the liberals in this country, they too must have a short term memory or suffer from text-book insanity.  Actually, in all fairness, if their history books are anything like the liberal versions of ours, they might not even know they were duped by mini-moustache man to begin with.  Ahmadinkyjerk has an even better line – it never happened.  Fuhgettaboutit!

So can we rip the darn thing up and START over?  Pun intended.

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Dan Calabrese

John Judis is a very good writer at a very good liberal magazine, The New Republic, which is brimming with thoughtful contributors rather than hysterical polemicists. (Well, mostly.) So when Judis decided to tackle the notion that Barack Obama’s presidency is starting to resemble that of Jimmy Carter’s, I expected an intellectually honest look at the question, and was not disappointed.

It's no treat for us either.

Judis could not deny the obvious similarities and still look at himself in the mirror, so he plays it straight and acknowledges what is plain for anyone to see – that Obama’s presidency is imploding politically, even if you don’t agree that it’s been a disaster substantively (which Judis does not).

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Bob Franken

For President Obama, there is no vacation from vacillation. By the time he got to the beach this weekend, the controversy over his Friday speech seemingly supporting the proposed mosque at the 9/11 site left him so rattled he could hardly wait to to put on his flip flops.

Run aground

Even the hastily arranged Gulf vacation itself was more of a placation, as in placating those who complained his family time off had not included the BP besieged Gulf shores, making his ringing words of support ring hollow.

Soon after he arrived he hastened to hollow out his words from the evening before, at the White House dinner marking the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as anyone else in this country” he declared, “And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.”

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication.

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Dan Calabrese

President Obama’s official news service, the Associated Press, reported last week that “rhetoric” is making it hard for Obama’s “bipartisan fiscal commission” to solve the problem of Social Security’s looming insolvency. Just to be clear, we’re talking about the sort of rhetoric in which someone on one side demagogues the suggestions and motives of those on the other side in order to create a poisonous environment in which the mere suggestion of a reform becomes political suicide.

Rhetoric.

Exhibit A: The rhetoric offered on Saturday by – let me see, who was it? – President Obama!

In his weekly address to the nation, Obama offered the usual Democratic trope about Republicans’ evil desires to destroy Social Security, achieving in the process their sinister goal of tossing Grandma and Grandpa out on the street and leaving the disabled sitting along the sidewalks in their broken-down wheelchairs, begging for scraps of food from the passing Wall Street bankers who are just coming out of Panera Bread.

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Dacia Nichol Taylor

Between immigration and gay marriage simultaneously becoming front page issues in one fell swoop, some people have decided to try using a familiar weather-worn method to silence the dissent: Cry bigot!

If there is any newly created hatred in this mess, it’s for the hubris involved, and it certainly has no more to do with prejudice than it ever has.  A racist was a racist long before Obama sued Arizona.  Homophobes were homophobes long before a gay judge shot down Prop 8.

I do not think so.

The sudden anger is not coming from the issue itself, but in the expectation that we will roll over and play dead on the issues.  When you seek to raise challenges on issues that have long been avoided by politicians wanting to stretch their life expectancy, you had better brace for a very loud, very public fight.

If I think green is tacky, I’m not going to use it on or for my personal items. Then, if you suddenly declare that my vehicle must be green because the environmental impact of green coloring is less than say, red, you’d better believe I’m going to express my dislike for green through every medium available to me.

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David Karki

The vote of 7 million Californians against same-sex “marriage” is thrown out by a rogue judge who then says the people don’t have standing to appeal.

Mexico is engulfed in a war with the drug cartels that has spilled over into sovereign American soil in Arizona, and not only does the Obama Administration not build a wall on the border to keep this violence – and any terrorists who might use the chaos and anarchy as cover to enter the country – out, they verbally attack and sue the state officials who are forced to take the smallest step to protect themselves due to this unconscionable dereliction.

It will never stop.

To top it off, the most appalling of all:  a mosque is planned for construction next to Ground Zero, where 3,000 innocents were evilly slaughtered by Muslims on 9/11. A bigger insult to the victims and their families there could not possibly be, not to mention a de facto symbol of victory and encouragement of more terror attacks for radical Muslims around the world. (As evidenced by their planned name of Cordoba, after the last Spanish Moor stronghold – a name that intentionally invokes an image of conquest.)

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Herman Cain

As primary elections are settled around the country, it is not too early to start remembering what people should remember in November. With all of the distractions coming out of Washington through the filter of the media, it is easy for people to forget come Election Day.

This writer will not forget. Here are some of the things this administration and Congress have done to deceive, mislead and insult the American people:

Big-time trouble.

TARP (Troubled Assets Relief Program): $750 billion

When the financial institutions started paying the taxpayers back with interest, the Democrats, led by Representative Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts), wanted to use the interest for other purposes instead of paying down debt as specified in the legislation. This is just dishonest – to tell the public one thing and then change the law later to be able to add to the national debt instead of reducing it.

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Gregory D. Lee

Former Jet Blue flight attendant Steven Slater reminds me of “Johnny” In Airplane!

His frolics aboard his plane, while at a gate at JFK international airport in New York City, are reminiscent of the flamboyant gay actor, Steven Stucker. He played the air control tower worker who nutted up when Lloyd Bridges showed him a report and asked him what he “made of it.” Instead of reading it, Johnny made a hat and flower with the report.

Douchebag.

Slater’s actions were worse, but only in real life. He even looks like Stucker, which reminded me of the movie. Looking at Slater’s photo holding his Jet Blue ID card and wearing a loony smile brings back memories of one of the funniest movies ever made. But what Slater did was not funny.

Slater is considered a folk hero by fellow empathetic workers who fantasize doing something similar at their work places, but can’t because the bad economy makes it hard to get another job. Slater, however, threw his job away when he chose to open the rear door to the plane, grabbed a couple of beers and slide down the emergency chute.

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Bob Franken

Those of us who are somewhat past puberty remember the Summer of Love. How much we recall depends on what we each ingested recreationally, but the consensus is that it did happen.

It defined a generation, but for those who missed out, a little background: It was actually spread over two years of sex-drug-and-rock-and-roll…from the 1967 release of the Beatles’ incredible Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album to the musical glory and excess at Woodstock in 1969.

Has it been that long?

The epicenter of this earthquake was San Francisco, specifically in the neighborhood around Haight and Ashbury streets, which became a magnet for all things hippie, a beacon for romanticized tolerance.

Sadly, the flowers in the air have turned poisonous. In the bad trip to Now, the times have been a-changin’ and here we are in the Summer of Hate.

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