BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Privacy is over-rated.
We say we want our privacy, but we really don’t care that much about it. The government wants the privacy to invade our privacy in order to sniff out terrorists. Despite the best efforts of Rand Paul and the ACLU, most Americans are just fine with that.
Polls show that when there is a competition between privacy and security, the American people pick security every time. Continue reading
BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com
And no, it is not because his name is on the great beer brewed by the Boston Lager Company.
Samuel Adams actually was not a very good brewer back in the day and probably lost more money borrowed from his wealthy dad than he ever made in any venture he undertook.
But he was a darned good writer and was able to catch the revolutionary spirit about as well as Thomas Paine or Benjamin Franklin or anyone else back in the day.
For his senior thesis at a small community college back then known as Harvard, Sam Adams wrote on this question: “Whether it be lawful to resist the supreme magistrate, if the commonwealth cannot be otherwise preserved?” Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
Karl Rove is probably a cafeteria conservative. So am I.
Cafeteria Catholics are Catholics who go to Mass on a regular, or semi-regular basis, but don’t exactly follow all the rules of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church has a lot of rules. No pre-marital sex. No masturbation. No birth control. No gay stuff. No abortion. No meat on Fridays. No food an hour before you take communion.
Lots of Catholics tend to pick and choose among these rules. The no pre- Continue reading
BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com
The President’s second inaugural brilliantly pushed forward his political agenda in ways that Republicans need to understand and learn from.
Republicans will never be able to outbid the President when it comes to coalition politics. But they need to appreciate how coalition politics, as practiced by the Democrats in the Obama era, is played and they need to come up with a game plan to counter it.
The President’s message was aspirational for the country, inspirational for his coalition partners and infuriating for his opposition. He was able to make the cause of his diverse coalition – gays, immigrants, anti-gun people, African-Americans, Hispanics, poor people – seemingly the most important cause of the nation. And he dared the Republicans to oppose it. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
The tragedy and the comedy of the fiscal cliff negotiations are that they have little to do with the fiscal cliff.
The fiscal cliff is a relatively straight-forward collection of budget issues. But like so many other budget issues that have become the playground of ideologues, the fiscal cliff negotiations have been hijacked by a herculean clash over political dogma, a classic struggle between progressive forces dedicated to the redistribution of wealth and libertarian forces dedicated to dismantling government as we know it. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
From Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine
I’ve been here for two days preparing for, and actually observing, the Ukrainian parliamentary elections. I was part of the International Observer Mission in that effort.
SIDEBAR
The day before I hopped on an airplane from Kiev to come down here, we were briefed by various government and political leaders. One person in our group asked whether international observers could remain in a precinct to watch the counting process. Continue reading
BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from Telemachus.com
This presidential election is going to be about 1 thing and one thing only: ‘Do you believe that America is built on the notion that free people engaging in free enterprise is the BEST thing we can do as a nation…or that everything flows from the federal government?’
That is pretty much it, ladies and gentlemen. We have always had the debate in our national elections over more or less ‘control’ from a centralized authority in Washington starting with the debates in the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
Let’s start with Europe and work our way back.
The Greeks held elections last week and they have not been able to form a government since.
The leader of the “Leftist” party (read, Communist), Alexis Tsipras, has told the rest of the European Union that he believes Greece should ignore the promises it made to be bailed out and, in essence, go off on its own.
According to the New York Times, “European leaders have warned that if Greece does not keep its promises, Europe will stop financing it, which would quickly lead to Greece defaulting on its debts and leaving the euro zone, as the countries who share the common euro currency are known.”
I’m not exactly sure what the Greek version of “nanny-nanny-boo-boo” is, but Tsipras appears to be chanting it. If a coalition government cannot be formed, new elections will be called and polls indicate the anti-bailout candidates will gain strength. Continue reading
BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com
According to two pieces I read over the weekend, the world is coming to an end but I am going to be out-of-town for it.
I am at JFK awaiting a flight to Accra, Ghana to whence I will be traveling on behalf of the ONE Campaign. Ghana is introducing two new vaccines to its medical system and I’ll be there to watch (and write about) the roll-out.
However.
While I’m gone I would appreciated it if you would take some steps to straighten up the national garage. It’s a mess and it would be a good thing if we started tossing out the junk and putting the good stuff in its proper place. Continue reading
BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from telemachus.com
Have you ever sat down and really thought about the amount of money you pay in taxes versus the direct benefits you receive from the government?
Alan Simpson’s rather salty but descriptive comment about Social Security could be politely amended to read: ‘The US federal government has 310 million teats on it to milk!’.
Depending on how many programs a person derives benefits from or tax preferences he or she uses, the number could be 1 billion for all we know.
Do this little exercise right now. Add up all the taxes you pay on one side of the ledger on a piece of paper or Excel spreadsheet. And then add up all the taxes that you saved from any tax deductions you use each year on your tax form and grants you received from the federal government in any form and put them in the other column. Continue reading
BY TONY BLANKLEY
Reprinted from The Washington Times
Since the end of World War II, in both the United States and Western Europe, the best way to win a national election has been to be the incumbent political party. But that 3-generation-old predisposition in Western democracies may be coming to an end.
We may well be entering a political epoch in which the best way to win a national election in the West is not to be the party in power.
For the past 65 years, the world economic order has been vastly favorable to the West’s middle-class citizens and voters with their incomes going up steadily or at least flattening at a predictable and comfortable material level. Moreover, the middle-class fears of economic hardship was virtually eliminated by the existence of the welfare safety net. Continue reading
BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON
I’ve tried to give President Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt. He’s young and inexperienced. He’s never run a government before, but he’s smart, personable and has a nice family.
The problem is he keeps making mistakes that are so sophomoric the doubt just continues to grow like Pinocchio’s nose and the benefit of the doubt looks more and more like a very bad investment.
Take the speech he gave before a Joint Session of Congress on job creation the other night.
His first mistake was giving it. Speeches before a Joint Session are very special. They are a privilege the Congress affords the President and they come with extremely high expectations. It requires that the President be, well, Presidential. President Obama had little hope of meeting those expectations. He had to issue a clarion call for consensus on a bold new economic agenda replete with innovative new ideas and a roadmap for getting us from here to there. Continue reading