Monthly Archives: November 2009

Archive of posts published in the specified Month

No Experience Needed

Kudos to Nick Schultz at American Enterprise for the very revealing chart. See his post here.

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More Government = More Lobbyists

Are lobbyists that bad? If the government was about to make sheet-rock illegal because of bad or misguided information and you were in the sheet-rock or home-building business, wouldn’t you seek to persuade the lawmakers than their efforts were wrong?

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“Skepticism is the Price Knowledge Pays for Truth”

Much has been written about the Climate-Gate, but Mark Steyn applies his clarifying wit to it in this article “Cooking the Books on Climate.” Read the whole article here. Excerpt: “The trouble with outsourcing your marbles to the peer-reviewed set

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When Science Becomes Religion

Boris Johnson, a classically educated journalist and previous mayor of London, responded to the catastrophic climate predictions of James Lovelock: “Like all the best religions, fear of climate change satisfies our need for guilt, and self disgust, and that human

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The Zombie Economy

By preventing assets from reaching their market levels, the administration risks making the recession last longer than it should. The uncertainty in all of the radical bills proposed in the first year has businesses behaving like a deer in the

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Happiness is a Byproduct

Julia Baird writes an interesting piece in Newsweek “Positively Downbeat- Sometimes Happiness isn’t everything.” She argues that our focus on positive thinking has made us gloomy; to overlook problems, unfairness, incompetence and stupidity. And stupidity is certainly not limited to

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Seatbelts vs Airbags

A repeated point in Superfreakonomics is that big expensive problems do not require big expensive solutions. Seatbelts, for example, are one of the most costs effective lifesaving devices ever. At $25 per installation it costs about $500 million to put

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Does a Fish Know He’s Wet?

When Charlie Gibson with ABC News acted ignorant of the booming ACORN corruption story while it was breaking, the pundits on the right were stunned that a major new anchor could be so insulated that he could miss such a

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Victims of the Feminist Revolution

In 1940 55% of college educated female workers in their thirties were employed as teachers.  As opportunities  for women broadened the best and the brightest left teaching and went into other higher paying fields.  The school teaching profession experienced a

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“Laissez-nous Faire!”

Adam Summers from the Reason Foundation writes in the Wall Street Journal, “Ayn Rand and the Economic Crisis”.  Read the entire article here. Adam shares Rand’s thoughts on the economic crisis of 1962. She cast suspicion on both the motives

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Macallan’s 57

Macallun’s Scotch 57 years old in a Lalique decanter with a glass stopper. Only $15,000. Should make a great stocking stuffer.

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The Double Standard of Political Anti-Semitism

Many of my conservative readers and colleagues are a bit dismayed on why the Jews overwhelmingly vote Democrat.  There are many possible explanations, enough to motivate a book by Jewish conservative Norman Podhoretz to title his latest book, “Why Are

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Hidden Inflation

We tend to look at the increase in prices as inflation, but in a situation of fluctuations prices go up and down. What if prices should be going down 3% but instead we see prices increasing 3%.  We see a

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Thinning the Paint

Carrie O’Connell writes in American Thinker “I am not supposed to exist” . A 26 year pro life Catholic woman, Carrie writes how her profile is totally absent from the collection of media stereotypes either in the news or in

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How Much is that Kidney in the Window?

Americans are appalled at the idea of an organ donor market, where individuals can be compensated for donating their organs while they are alive. We fear that the rich will prey on the poor, and that people may even be

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A Paine in our History

Thomas Paine’s ” Common Sense” was credited with turning colonial independence from a debate into a movement. His widely published essay is considered an important document toward the founding of our nation. Less noted is Paine’s “The Age of Reason”

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Cultural Receptors for Anti-Semitism

“Another factor affecting the nature of anti-Semitic manifestations is cultural in a deeper sense. Some societies value individualism more than communalism, some the other way around. In most Western societies and in American society in particular, the ethos at large

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