Why Broadband is Not a Public Utility

-By Scott Cleland

The data and evidence show that broadband is not a public utility warranting economic regulation of prices, terms and conditions; this is contrary to the assertions of net neutrality proponents: the Markey-Eshoo Bill, FreePress, the Open Internet Coalition and Google’s Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, among others.

Why is broadband not a public utility?

First, it is a competitive service, not a natural monopoly service.

A public utility presumes “natural monopoly” economics where economies of scale and scope preclude the possibility of competitive facilities/services.

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Why Broadband is Not a Public Utility”


A Warning For Obama: President Hoover’s Fealty to Unions Worsened Great Depression

-By Warner Todd Huston

An economist is saying that President Hoover set the stage to worsen The Great Depression because of his pro-labor union stance.

Pro-labor policies pushed by President Herbert Hoover after the stock market crash of 1929 accounted for close to two-thirds of the drop in the nation’s gross domestic product over the two years that followed, causing what might otherwise have been a bad recession to slip into the Great Depression, a UCLA economist concludes in a new study.

Lee E. Ohanian, a UCLA professor of economics, lays the worst of the Depression at the feet of Hoover who, in his opinion, made the recession “three times worse” by keeping industrial wages too high which “sharply depressed employment.”

Ohanian’s study is being published by the peer-reviewed Journal of Economic Theory in December and was also posted at www.nber.org, the site of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
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A Warning For Obama: President Hoover’s Fealty to Unions Worsened Great Depression”


“We The People”

-By Marie Jon


“When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” — Thomas Jefferson

President Barack Obama, you’ve overwhelmed “We The People.” Since you were given the prestige of the highest office in the land, there has not been one day of peace or tranquility for the citizens of our country. Many Americans are feeling frustrated and angered, and rightfully so.

One could say you’ve eroded away the last of the American people’s trust, respect, and patience. You’re now threatening to intrude into every facet of our daily lives, and enough is enough.

Thou shalt not bear false witness

We see you as the “number one” community organizer sitting in the White House. The members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and union thugs are being mobilized to counter the truth at public gatherings. They are sent out for the sole purpose of confronting, threatening, intimidating, and maligning your opponents, including those among America’s elderly who’ve come to stand up for their rights at town hall meetings. — View YouTube)

Very few believe you anymore. Only those who refuse to listen to reason remain gullible. Their minds are still open to your deceptive lies. You used cunningly-crafted words and theatrics during the 2008 election to con half of America into thinking you were a special and decent man of integrity, but even your Democrat constituents are becoming aware of what you are. You and your political cronies are corrupt to the hilt, like the rest of the Daley Chicago political machine.

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“We The People””


The Race Idiots

-By Selwyn Duke

With relativistic people, there is no such thing as a true axiom, yet you’d never know it listening to our modern mantras. We hear things such as “Our strength lies in our diversity,” “Religion has caused all the wars in history,” and “Everything is a matter of perspective” proclaimed with theological assurance. Of course, the last supposition is contradictory, and embracing it renders moral supposition itself meaningless. Regardless, it’s natural for man to make sense of the world by “profiling” elements of reality.

Many of our assumptions pertain to race, and one is always uttered in the wake of stories such as the recent Henry Louis Gates affair. What happens is that, referring to race, people will reflexively say something akin to the following, “Well, we still have a long way to go.” Even conservatives pay homage to this self-evident provisional “truth,” only, they add a qualifier so it goes something like, “We still have a long way to go, but . . .,” with the caboose being “we’ve made great strides,” “we’ve come a long way” or some variation thereof. It’s obligatory, after all. It’s how you polish up you credentials as a person who “understands the problem.”

It’s also reflective of a hang-up. Oh, this isn’t to say I believe we’ve achieved perfection in racial attitudes, perish the thought. It is to say, however, that seeing a failure to achieve perfection in an area as a characteristic problem is far more of a problem than what ostensibly needs invasive and aggressive remedy. It usually yields a cure worse than the disease.
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The Race Idiots”


Government Stimulus Spending: Differing Perspectives

-By Thomas E. Brewton

President Franklin Roosevelt, speaking of the intractable Depression, sourly admitted that Keynesian fiscal policy, in theory, was the simplest thing in the world, but in practice, a disaster.

A thoughtful reader, who generally disagrees with me, posted the following as part of his comment responding to The Bigger the Government, the Harder the Economic Fall:

I must confess that I find your “mysticism” explanation of how business cycles occur somewhat baffling, but knowing your anti-Keynesian viewpoint, I should not be surprised that you view any governmental pump priming with suspicion.

According to the butterfly effect, any seemingly insignificant action will have a cascading effect and invariably lead to a chain of events elsewhere. How much more telling would the expenditure (whether you approve or not) of billions of dollars be to the economy than the flutter of the wing of a moth?

My response:

I can’t presume to speak for the reader’s views, but liberal-progressives on balance advocate the Keynesian macro-economic approach, a variety of chaos-theory, butterfly effect, which appears to me to be simplistic.
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Government Stimulus Spending: Differing Perspectives”


Beware of Bitter, Old, Lefty, White Women With Dreadlocks

-By Warner Todd Huston

I haven’t seen so many lies, misconstructions, affectations, and guffaw-invoking absurdities in a single editorial in a major American newspaper for a very long time. In fact I thought it wasn’t possible to see so much foolishness in such a small space without satire being the ultimate goal. In the L.A. Times, however, Anne Lamott has succeeded in making a bigger fool of herself in one editorial than Maureen Dowd could hope to have achieved in a whole year’s worth of blather.

Lamott, an aging novelist that churns out those woefully indulgent tomes that forces readers to endure her darkest feelings and imagines that all of us are on the edge of our seats as she chronicles raising her child, fancies herself an expert on faith and grace. She seems to imagine that she defines it, what ever it is. Of course she was one of the most infested with Bush Derangement Syndrome and was quick to warm to her ersatz religious leader, Barack Hussein Obama. It seems to me that she’s spent her life looking for meaning anywhere and she thought she finally found paydirt with The One. She likes to use words like “grace” and “belief” a lot in her writing but like a true newagie, leftist she rarely talks about any actual religion except in the vaguest of terms. It does appear, though, that she had found a new religion in The One.

And now, with her piece in the Times, it seems she is on the verge of losing her religion… again.
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Beware of Bitter, Old, Lefty, White Women With Dreadlocks”


King Daley Apologizes for his Meter Mess

-By Warner Todd Huston

Tuesday, Mayor “King” Daley apologized for the mess he and his buddies made of the sale of Chicago’s parking meters to a private company.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reports:

“I’ll be the first to admit that we totally screwed up the way it was implemented. I want us to do better — and we will,” Daley plans to tell the crowd at the South Shore Cultural Center, 7059 S. Shore Dr., according to a copy of his speech obtained by the Sun-Times.

No issue in recent memory — not even the Hired Truck scandal or Daley’s notorious midnight destruction of Meigs Field — has resonated more with voters than the 75-year, $1.15 billion parking meter lease tied to a steep schedule of rate hikes.

An apology is pretty meaningless when Daley is already walking around with the cash merrily jingling in his pocket and no real changes are being offered. After all, even as he was to “apologize” Daley planned to go on to say that the whole episode was still the best of ideas.

So, it’s really just more empty words from Mayor Daley.
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King Daley Apologizes for his Meter Mess”


Obamacare to Force Restaurants to Post Health Info

-By Warner Todd Huston

Another great piece by CNSNews reveals that Obamacare will force restaurants to post nutrition information on menus throughout the country. This is more of the amazing overreach that Obama is attempting to force upon all Americans as he launches a full assault on the American character in order to push his nanny state ideals.

If Obamacare passes, Congress has taken upon itself the power to force millions of businesses to reprint their menus. Congress expects any restaurant with 20 outlets or more to observe a provision in section 325 of the House healthcare bill that demands nutritional information to be printed on menus.

Section 325 of the bill says the listings must be placed “(i)n a nutrient disclosure statement adjacent to the name of the standard menu item, so as to be clearly associated with the standard menu item, on the menu listing the item for sale, the number of calories contained in the standard menu item, as usually prepared and offered for sale.”

The nanny state strikes again.
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Obamacare to Force Restaurants to Post Health Info”


Pot Calls Kettle Black: News at 11

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

Hey, greetings fellow Obama critics, or should I say, fellow racists? Yes, that’s right; if you so much as dare to breathe even a scintilla of critical analysis about the national disaster train wreck that is President Obama and his socialist agenda for America, you are now a racist. Just ask the grindingly prejudiced Southern Poverty Law Center or Cuba’s why-isn’t-he-dead-yet Fidel Castro or Hollywood hackette Janeane Garofalo. They’ve demonized you nine ways to Sunday so own up to being a demon and get on with your life…preferably marginalized, ignored, unwashed, unloved and ridden out of town on a rusty rail.

It’s their America now, not yours, peasant, so shut-up when our oh-so-corrupt rulers legally loot the public treasury at their convenience. Corrupt? Did I say corrupt? I beg your pardon! It’s “morally challenged” in the brave new world of socialist double-speak.

Remember all the true moral outrage of real Americans at the Town Hall meetings especially aimed at the elected members of the Jackass Party? Authentic, spontaneous and honest Town Halls are slated for extinction because Democrats can’t stand the smell of real people. Right, Senator Harry Reid? Since Democrats are quick studies get set for stage-managed pro-Obama rallies, where political dissent will be a thing of the past because Obama’s Union thugs will make sure to beat it out of you.
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Pot Calls Kettle Black: News at 11″


Publius Podcast

-By Warner Todd Huston

Why do they let him get away with it? That is the question I ask this week on the Publius podcast. Why do they let President Obama lie repeatedly during his snake-oil sales pitch for healthcare?


Michael Kent Curtis: Just Another Sold-Out Leftist Professor

-By Warner Todd Huston

Michael Kent Curtis, the Donald Smith Professor of Constitutional and Public Law at Wake Forest University, has not only proven his ignorance of the facts, but he has also shown that truth does not matter a whit to him if it gets in the way of common liberal propaganda. He proved this in his blather in the Houston Chronicle on August 22.

Curtis, just another prosaic left-wing professor infesting an institute of higher learning, started his opinion piece off with an outright lie by claiming that “[O]rganized mobs recently have disrupted public meetings.” By this the lefty prof means the thousands of angry citizens that have shown their contempt for Democrat lawmakers at townhall meetings all across the country are not real. They are but dismissible false fronts for anti-Obamacare groups. This refrain is assumed by such as professor Curtis and his fellow leftists so that they can comfortably ignore the outrage against this socialist takeover of nearly 20% of our economy by Obama’s government bureaucrats. Consequently, this refrain of “organized protests” is the left’s talking point du jour.

But have you noticed that we haven’t seen any proof that the angry Americans that have taken the time out of their lives to confront their federal representatives at townhall meetings are not common citizens acting on their own initiative, but are merely “organized mobs”? Have you noticed that no proof of the purported “organized” nature of the protests has once been presented? Have you noticed that the left has not bothered to detail how these protests were organized, that they have not bothered to try and connect the dots? These leftists simply say it is true and then move on as if their case is self-evident.
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Michael Kent Curtis: Just Another Sold-Out Leftist Professor”


By His Own Statistics, Obama Wants Illegal Aliens Covered by Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

In a July interview with Katie Couric, President Obama was asked if “his” plan would cover illegal aliens. He responded with a simple “no.”

To be sure there is language in House bill 3200 that says illegals aren’t covered.

Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.

But who cannot realize that all it will take is the next Congress to take out the red pen to strike out this little provision so that the government can then begin covering illegals? There is nothing at all keeping any subsequent Congress from doing so as no matter what this Congress does it cannot bind any future Congress.

Representative Lamar Alexander (R, Texas) has even said that, prohibiting language or no, there are so many loopholes in HR3200 that illeglas can easily find government funding for healthcare, anyway.
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By His Own Statistics, Obama Wants Illegal Aliens Covered by Obamacare”


You Say You Want a Real Solution

-By Frank Salvato

As the debate over health care reform rages on – and despite the fact that the debate should be over how to provide true health care affordability to all, if in fact the goal of the “overhaul” is genuinely about the good of the downtrodden – we hear one retort from Progressives, Liberals and neo-Marxists, both in government and out: Where is your plan if you don’t like ours? Truth be told, there are several conservative and Republican crafted plans but Madam Pelosi and Mr. Reid won’t entertain them and the agenda-driven mainstream media won’t cover them. But one thing is evident, even to the intellectually challenged. If the goal is truly to provide health care affordability to every American citizen, there are ways to do it without the heavy hand of government.

Most honest Americans agree, our health care system – the system that provides medical service, i.e. doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc. – is the best in the world. It certainly does not need reform or government intervention. If you need proof it comes in the form of the richest and most powerful people in the world coming to the United States for treatment, especially when every other avenue of treatment has been exhausted. To fall prey to the notion that the “health care system is broken,” is to be gullible to a fault.

The cog that isn’t meshing correctly in the machine that includes patients, doctors, hospitals and insurance companies is the insurance company cog. Many in our country would like to see more affordable prices, inclusionary coverage for those of us with pre-existing conditions and security in knowing that if a catastrophic medical event happens to us we won’t be driven to the poor house by increased premiums of unfunded procedures. As our health care insurance system exists today, these desirable elements are not within reach of everyone. But by including a few simple provisions and/or pursuing a few sensible avenues, Americans can have affordable, functioning health care insurance for all without creating a government-run health care entity.
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You Say You Want a Real Solution”


A Christian Analysis Of Atheism, Part 2

-By Frederick Meekins

Try as the atheist might to manipulate objective data to fit their hypothesis with some evolutionists going so far as to invoke the law in order to suppress perspectives conflicting with their origins account, the assumptions of atheism fail to square with the facts of nature and with the revelation of nature’s God. At one time earlier in the modern era, it was quite common for the atheist to portray himself as the true friend and ally of science. However, as impartial observational science has probed deeper onto the macroscopic realm of cosmic space as well as the microscopic world of the subatomic particle, this relationship once prided by the atheist turned out not to be as solid as originally thought.

The scientific establishment and the philosophical elites once derided the so-called “theistic proofs” for the existence of God as the outdated wisdom of a less-enlightened era. It turns out, however, that these time-honored arguments may be as relevant as the latest academic journals.

The cosmological argument, perhaps the best known, states that all finite realities and structures have a cause. Therefore, ultimately there must be an uncaused cause complete in itself in order to get the proverbial billiard ball rolling; this the theist declared to be God.
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A Christian Analysis Of Atheism, Part 2″


Some Interesting Admissions By WaPost’s Kurtz

-By Warner Todd Huston

In his Washington Post column for August 25, Howard Kurtz sound exasperated, fed up with those moron Americans that dare to have an opinion against Obama’s socialist take over of the country’s healthcare system. Oh, and he felt the need to slam Governor Sarah Palin, too… but what’s new about that? What is unusual, though, is the admission that Kurtz thinks that the Old Media should influence public opinion instead of merely inform readers about the news.

Of course he led with a laugher that is hard to take seriously. His very first few words makes of him a laughing stock.

For once, mainstream journalists did not retreat to the studied neutrality of quoting dueling antagonists.

For once? For once? And, what’s with the claim of studied neutrality? He’s kidding, right? Does Kurtz really expect to be taken seriously with that first line?

Next he goes on to attack Palin for her “death panels” line.

They tried to perform last rites on the ludicrous claim about President Obama’s death panels, telling Sarah Palin, in effect, you’ve got to quit making things up.

But it didn’t matter. The story refused to die.

Well, it refuses to die because it is easy to believe that this president would be first to demand death panels. After all, he was always a consistent vote for infanticide and death panels for babies. Not only that, but we know that Obama has brought back the “death panels” for our military veterans, policies that were stopped by Bush. Palin is far more believable than Obama in this debate.

And now for Howie’s unusual admission.
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Some Interesting Admissions By WaPost’s Kurtz”


Obama’s Stimulus a Farce in New Hampshire

-By Warner Todd Huston

One of the first states to attempt to tally the “new jobs” that Obama’s stimulus created has issued its first report and the news is rather discreditable to say the least. New Hampshire’s Director of the Economic Stimulus, Bud Fitch, recently put out his report and he is asserting that the stimulus “saved” or created 796 jobs in all of the state. Naturally 700 of those jobs were government jobs.

New Hampshire Public Radio interviewed economist Brian Gottlob who warned that the supposed 700 jobs saved, nearly all were in education, were probably not jobs on the chopping block in the first place. So to say that these jobs were “saved” is a bit absurd.

Gottlob says that few of these jobs in education would have been cut because the budgets would have been found to keep them stimulus or no. It is infrequent that state jobs in education have been cut in the past, according to Gottlob, so to say that the stimulus “saved” these jobs is not very credible.
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Obama’s Stimulus a Farce in New Hampshire”


If ObamaCare Wins, Obama Loses

-By Michael M. Bates

“It’s like déjà vu all over again,” noted philosopher Yogi Berra is credited with saying. And so it is.

A liberal Democratic president has his heart set on pushing through a proposal strongly unpopular with most Americans. Enjoying substantial Democratic majorities in both the House and the Senate, he intends to win.

So it was in September, 1977 when Jimmy Carter signed the Panama Canal treaties to relinquish United States control. An Associated Press opinion poll conducted that month found that only 29 percent of Americans favored the pact. A solid 50 percent opposed it and 21 percent expressed no opinion.

Just as Barack Obama is determined to shove a government health care program down the throats of his protesting countrymen, Carter did what was necessary to get the Senate to ratify the Panama Canal treaties. He cajoled, he promised, he threatened. It worked.
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If ObamaCare Wins, Obama Loses”


Obamacare: Quintessential Socialism

-By Thomas E. Brewton

The overriding characteristic of President Obama’s National Socialist healthcare is forced equality of consumption, a major step in the direction of egalitarian distribution of income. Emphasis is upon the word forced.

As we see with the widespread town hall protests against the President’s proposed National Socialist healthcare proposals, people do not willingly surrender the fruits of many years’ labor to the government in the name of an undefined abstraction called the common good. Particularly is this true when it is liberal-progressive bureaucrats who decide arbitrarily what constitutes the common good.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed essay, Martin Feldstein, Harvard economics professor and former chairman of President Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors, sums up Obamacare: it’s all about the raw power to decide who gets what treatment, while cramming everyone into identical little boxes in order to eliminate any efforts in the direction of individuality. And the bureaucratic mechanism for eliminating individuality is rationing medical care.
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Obamacare: Quintessential Socialism”


Travel Writer Flips Bird to Most of U.S.A.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Travel writer Arthur Frommer recently said that he will never visit any place in Arizona again. Is it because he was badly served at a Denny’s in Flagstaff? Maybe he didn’t like the turn down service at the Motel Six in Phoenix? Perhaps he was mad because the folks at the McDonald’s in Tucson didn’t recognize him? Nope. It’s because Arizonans are fond of the Constitution of the United States, that’s why.

On his blog, Frommer fretted over the recent appearance of Arizona’s law-abiding citizens carrying firearms at a townhall meeting. It so upset his delicate mental balance that he asked, “Do Guns at Political Events Disturb You?,” and then went on to recommend that if they do, “Then Consider Skipping Arizona for Now.”

This elitist, left-winger went on to show that he doesn’t know a thing about the very country he pretends to write about in his travels.
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Travel Writer Flips Bird to Most of U.S.A.”


All the President’s Bigoted Men

-By Selwyn Duke

When Barack Obama said that the Henry Louis Gates affair was a teaching moment, he spoke truly. But the key is ensuring that the right things are taught and the right people learn. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to happen.

There is no need to rehash the events of July 16 chapter and verse. We all know about how the Harvard professor flew into a rage of racial accusations and haughty posturing after Sergeant James Crowley appeared at his Cambridge home to investigate a report of a possible break-in. We’ve heard that Gates called Crowley a “racist” and said he was being targeted because “I’m a black man in America.” We know how Barack Obama stirred the pot, saying at a press conference that he didn’t know all the facts but then averring that the police “acted stupidly.” And we also know that it’s a foot-in-mouth moment Obama wishes he could do a Groundhog Day on, and that he fancies a beer a substitute for an apology.

Moreover, the obvious points have already been made. We know that the police were simply following procedure in requesting Gates’ identification and asking that he step outside his home. It has also been mentioned that, far from the police racially profiling the man, he and Obama applied that technique in assuming that the white police officer was bigoted and/or acting stupidly. And, in keeping with last point, some of the boldest commentators even have hinted that bigotry may lie in the hearts of Gates and Obama. Yet no one has thus far dared expose the pretense.
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All the President’s Bigoted Men”


Multi-Cultural Amorality in the White House

-By Thomas E. Brewton

Washington Post reports that President Obama aims to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Doing so will offend hundreds of millions of heterosexual married couples in order to please a minority of voters. If one looks only at homosexual couples, that minority is probably less than 1% of the population, particularly if one takes into account the lesser degree of stability in homosexual relationships than in heterosexual ones.

Politically, the President’s opposition to DOMA is probably motivated by his need to throw a sop to his liberal-progressive-socialist worshippers, who have been irritated or outraged by his failure to deliver on many of his campaign promises.
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Multi-Cultural Amorality in the White House”


Four Videos Serve as Dose of Reality on Obamacare

-By Warner Todd Huston

The Heritage Foundation has four excellent videos each taking on an injurious and troublesome aspect of Obamacare that are a must view for those looking for ammunition with which to shoot down the president’s policies.

Rather than debate the substance, the White House is in full campaign mode in order to label any opposition to its government-heavy health reform agenda as “misinformation” or “myths you’ve heard.” Case in point: The White House now has a taxpayer-funded Web site to “reality check” credible criticisms and arguments. Problem is the videos “debunking” each “myth” are low on facts. See our response below.

First up is a video addressing the many millions that will lose their health insurance quite despite what the president keeps telling us. Far from being able to keep our insurance “if we like it,” the truth is that 88 million will lose their policies whether they like it or not upon the passage of Obamacare.
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Four Videos Serve as Dose of Reality on Obamacare”


Empty Cradles, Demographic Destiny and the Death of the West

-By Selwyn Duke

While the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding was good cinema, it was also a big fat Hollywood fiction. With Greece’s fertility rate of 1.36 children per woman — well below the replacement level of 2.1 — “big” is not a modifier demographers would associate with today’s Greek families. In fact, a more accurate film might be called My Big Fat Muslim Wedding.

Worse still, Greece is no anomaly. Long ago the cradle of Western civilization and more recently one of its backwaters, it’s now part of a phalanx of Western demographic failures. In fact, while it may seem counterintuitive to those weaned on the stuff of Malthusian nightmares, the West is facing a population implosion of historic proportions. And the statistics are staggering. As I wrote when reviewing the documentary Demographic Winter last year:

. . . the number of children in the world is already declining . . . . Birthrates are now below replacement level . . . in approximately 70 countries; in Western Europe, the figure is 1.38, and in northern Italy and parts of Spain it is below 1. As a result, Europe’s 65-year-olds now outnumber her 14-year-olds, and one German province had to close 220 schools in 2006. Children were present in 80 percent of U.S. households a century ago; that number is now 32 percent.

Although pondering demographic malaise conjures up the image of sterile Western swingers, note that this phenomenon is, in a measure, manifesting itself worldwide. Take Eastern Europe, for example. Russia, with its birthrate of 1.4 children per woman, is experiencing a population decrease of 700,000 a year. With an even lower birthrate of 1.22, some Lithuanian officials are concerned about the eventual disappearance of their population. And this is mirrored in other Eastern European nations; Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and the rest are all turning in similar numbers.
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Empty Cradles, Demographic Destiny and the Death of the West”


Dems Now to Go it Alone on Healthcare, Dumping Bi-Partisanship?

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Times is reporting that Congressional Democrats and the White House are now completely abandoning the claim that they want a bi-partisan healthcare “reform” bill thereby confirming conservative claims that no compromise is coming from the left with healthcare policies.

The spin from Democrats is that Republicans are at fault for the lack of bi-partisanship because if their “strident” stance against Obamacare.

Top Democrats said Tuesday that their go-it-alone view was being shaped by what they saw as Republicans’ purposely strident tone against health care legislation during this month’s Congressional recess, as well as remarks by leading Republicans that current proposals were flawed beyond repair.

Of course, the truth is that the GOP has not been included in any meaningful way since the beginning. Democrats have reached out to just the few Republicans that they think they can cajole to join their ideas, but there has been no effort at all to include GOP leaders in the healthcare debate.
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Dems Now to Go it Alone on Healthcare, Dumping Bi-Partisanship?”


Senate Dems Are Against Secret Ballot for Unions… But Not Themselves

-By Warner Todd Huston

It has to be the ultimate hypocrisy, but the Democrat Party has been touting its support for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), a bill that would eliminate the secret ballot for potential union members, but recently decided that a secret ballot for Senators on whether or not to vote in committee chairmen is quite important. The hypocrisy is stark. I say again, even as Senate Democrats have found no reason to protect the democratic right of the secret ballot for union workers they’ve decided that it is a must for themselves when voting in or out Senate committee chairmen.

The Hill newspaper reported recently that Senate Democrats were recently mulling over a new way to appoint committee chairmen.

In an apparent warning to Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.), some liberal Democrats have suggested a secret-ballot vote every two years on whether or not to strip committee chairmen of their gavels.

This brouhaha over the status of Democratic chairmen has been going on for a while, but that fight is not our focus here.
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Senate Dems Are Against Secret Ballot for Unions… But Not Themselves”


Fashion Police In UK Impose Burkinis On Non-Muslims

-By Ann “Babe” Huggett

Summer 2009 may be half way over but there’s still time to work on that tan down by the public swimming pool. Unless, of course, you happen to live in the UK and then sunburn and tan lines will be the least of your worries. It turns out that non-Muslim recreational swimmers must adhere to sharia approved swim wear or be turned away from taxpayer funded municipal pools and state schools. It’s the UK’s latest move to accommodate its increasingly demanding, never-satisfied, always-probing-for-weaknesses Islamic community.

With such blatant favoritism guaranteed to stir up even greater antipathy towards Muslims than already exists, the politically correct pool fool administrators across the country are now insisting on sex-segregated access, that men, yes men, “…cover themselves from the navel to the knee…” and that women show only their faces, hands and feet. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t Muslim; you either wear “modest” Muslim approved dress during the days or hours designated for Muslim swimmers or you don’t so much as dip your big toe in the water.

Large, baggy swim wear for men has been a regrettable sportswear staple for years and even topping those trunks off with a tee shirt won’t impede the swimmer too much. However, on the distaff side of the equation, form fitting wet suits aren’t modest enough and Doctor Denton jammies are right out because they have drop door rear ends. So it’s the burkini for you, baby, or else!
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Fashion Police In UK Impose Burkinis On Non-Muslims”


Assoc. Press Downplays Townhall Anger

-By Warner Todd Huston

In an August 17 piece on former DNC Chair Howard Dean’s appearance on a morning news show, the Associated Press did its best to downplay the high passions and anger showed by thousands of average citizens at townhall meetings across the country.

Dean was heard insisting that Obama not back down from including the “public option” in any healthcare bill, saying that such a feature is “indispensable” to its success at reforming our healthcare system. After the opening paragraphs, the AP characterized the possible removal of the public option by emphasizing Republicans and downplaying the outrage seen by citizens themselves.

Dean appeared on morning news shows Monday amid increasing indications the Obama White House is retreating from the public option in the face of vocal opposition from Republicans and some vocal participants at a town-hall-style meetings around the country.

“Some vocal participants at town-hall style meetings,” AP? Anyone watching the news accounts of the townhall meetings over the last three weeks will see far more than merely “some vocal participants” displaying their disagreement with Obamacare policies. The outrage being seen at these meetings has been the hottest news item around for weeks. There is far more than “some” vocal participants.
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Assoc. Press Downplays Townhall Anger”


Why Conservatives Get Sandbagged By Liberals

-By Warner Todd Huston

A few weeks ago the Weekly Standard had a ridiculously hopeful editorial about how President Obama couldn’t possibly go any further to the left with his next SCOTUS pick because of the ideological basis upon which they sold Justice Sotomayor. For the Standard, Terry Eastland was sure that the logic by which Sotomayor was sold to the country would preclude a shift leftward for the next court pick. Unfortunately, Eastland proved once again that too many conservatives simply do not understand that liberalism does not rely on logic or consistency , it simply barrels forward with no heed to reason. You see, liberals are powermongers, not logicians. They only care about what wins not that their logic is consistent moment to moment. Eastland’s complete lack of understanding shows why conservatives are sideswiped by liberals every time.

Eastland’s main point was that during the confirmation process, Judge Sotomayor “dissented from her sponsor’s view of what a judge should be” by presenting her judicial philosophy as one based on a strict interpretation of the law. This, Eastland notes, is in stark contrast to President Obama’s apparently long-held belief that a judge needed “empathy” to be a good jurist.

Eastland notes that in 2005, then Senator Obama voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts “precisely because… the nominee came up short on the empathy measure.” Eastland then points out that early in the four-day-long confirmation process Sotomayor began “separating herself from Obama on the matter of empathy” and that her testimony eventually made explicit the difference between the nominee and her patron on that point.
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Why Conservatives Get Sandbagged By Liberals”