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Komen Funding Flap Exposes Planned Parenthood's Lie 2.3.12Episode Description
Charity: On the surface, the Komen Foundation's reversal of its Planned Parenthood grant cut-off shows the left's power to enforce conformity. What it really reveals is that Planned Parenthood doesn't need taxpayer support.
When the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation announced it was planning to stop giving money to Planned Parenthood a short five years after it started, you'd have thought from the reaction that it had committed a capital crime.
Liberals brutally denounced the charity. More than two dozen Democratic senators called on Komen to reconsider. One of them, California's Barbara Boxer, said the funding cutoff reminded her of "the McCarthy era."
In short order, Komen more or less reversed itself, rather than see its hugely successful, 30-year effort to cut breast cancer deaths burned to the ground by a liberal lynch mob.
But before Komen caved, an interesting thing happened: Donations to Planned Parenthood exploded. Within hours, in fact, 6,000 donated a total of $400,000. A family in Dallas pledged $250,000, and New York's Mayor Bloomberg promised to match that.
In other words, Planned Parenthood more than made up for the $680,000 in grants that Komen was planning to withhold.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Fri Feb, 3 | Share     
As Obama Crows, Real Story Is 10.5 Mil Jobs Deficit 2.3.12Episode Description
Jobs: Of course it's good news that 243,000 new jobs were created in January, shaving the unemployment rate to 8.3%. But thanks to massive policy errors by the White House, we're still way below where we should be.
President Obama, speaking in Arlington, Va., immediately took credit for the bullish report, crowing that "altogether, we've added 3.7 million new jobs over the last 23 months."
The president went on to say: "We can't go back to the policies that led to the recession. And we can't let Washington stand in the way of our recovery."
"Our" recovery? And "We can't go back to the policies that led to the recession"? The cause of the recession was, in fact, housing policies put in place by President Clinton and aggressively supported by Democrats in Congress, including former Sen. Barack Obama.
How soon we forget. These were the policies that led to the housing meltdown, the financial crisis and, ultimately, the deep recession we're still climbing out of.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Fri Feb, 3 | Share Obama?s Rhetoric Vs. Reality On Capital Gains 2.3.12Episode Description
Taxes: President Obama's campaign to soak rich investors is already getting complicated. His small-business breaks would benefit those he says are paying less than a fair share.
The State of the Union speech is fast fading into history, but one of its themes ? raising taxes on the rich ? has legs in politics if not in policy. This is an election year, and the idea of making people like Warren Buffett (or Mitt Romney) pay a higher share of the income to the government polls well.
One of Obama's allies in Congress, Rep. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has introduced a bill that would impose a minimum effective tax rate of 30% on people earning more than $1 million. The bill may not get very far in the current Congress, but that's not the point. The object is to win in November. The 30% bill is political rhetoric, not serious policy.
Even Obama must know that his endorsement of a 30% minimum tax on the wealthy is just hot air. As a practical matter, the only way to garner that much from the Warren Buffett-Mitt Romney set is to end preferential treatment for capital gains and stock dividends, raising the top rates from 15% to 35%.
Even then, a big giver to church and charity, such as Romney, would still be able to keep the federal share tax bite below 30%.
But the Obama administration says, at least this time around, that it will leave the charitable deduction alone. So it would have to dig deeply into investment income if it is to come close to imposing a Buffett Rule that meets its own fairness test.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Fri Feb, 3 | Share White House More Worried About Israel Than Nuclear Iran 2.3.12Episode Description
Nuclear Terror: The administration claims economic sanctions are working in preventing Iran from making a nuclear weapon. Why, then, is Tehran apparently assembling a missile that can reach the U.S.? To carry TNT?
President Obama has described the waves of economic sanctions imposed on Islamofascist Iran as "the sort of pressure that will have a direct impact on the Iranian government."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month claimed that "sanctions have been working," making it "much more difficult for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions."
Foundation for Defense of Democracies President Cliff May concedes that sanctions have done some good, but are far from enough. In a column last week, he noted Iran's currency has lost half its value since December, inflation is officially over 20% and may really be twice that, and crude oil production is falling.
Plus, "Iran's rulers have forfeited more than $60 billion in energy investment and $14 billion in annual oil sales," with hundreds of billions of dollars in potential natural gas sales prevented.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Fri Feb, 3 | Share Food Gestapo Seek A Bureau Of Alcohol, Tobacco, Sugar 2.3.12Episode Description
Nanny State: The food police who've targeted everything from salt to Happy Meals now set their sights on regulating sugar as a controlled substance to fight obesity. The fat we should fear most, though, is overweight government.
The pursuit of happiness, one of those unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator, is under assault once again by those who spend every waking moment worrying that somebody somewhere is actually enjoying his or her life without government supervision.
In an article titled "The Toxic Truth About Sugar," published in the journal Nature, researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (where else?) said worldwide consumption of sugar has tripled over the last 50 years and is now contributing to 35 million annual deaths, even if sugar-coated corn flakes aren't listed as the causes of death.
Whether these unfortunate victims of what may be called "cereal killers" died happy is also not recorded.
The researchers cite three major health risks ? alcohol, tobacco and sugar.
"Two of these three ? tobacco and alcohol ? are regulated by governments to protect public health, leaving one of the primary culprits behind this worldwide health crisis unchecked," the researchers write.
by OutloudOpinion.com For more Podcasts visit www.outloudopinion.com
Investor's Business Daily | Fri Feb, 3 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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On Bullying: It Takes One To Know One 7.26.10Episode Description
President Obama was apparently moved enough by a letter from a Philadelphia fifth-grader about bullying that he wrote back and encouraged his correspondent to continue her quest to end bullying. Oh, how rich the irony!
Barack Obama is nothing if not a bully. There, I said it, and I believe it's true, no matter how politically incorrect and inconsistent with the mainstream media's narrative it is.
Before getting to some examples, let me direct your attention to the White House's comments on the exchange and the reaction of Obama's fifth-grade correspondent, Zina Stokes.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
David Limbaugh | Mon Jul, 26 | Share Russia Spies; America Apologizes 7.26.10Episode Description
Arriving at a biker's convention in Ukraine on his Harley Davidson trike, Vladimir Putin offered a few observations on his recent celebratory meeting with the 10 Russian sleeper agents deported from the United States. "They had a very difficult fate," the former KGB colonel noted sympathetically. "They had to carry out a task to benefit their motherland's interests for many, many years without a diplomatic cover, risking themselves and those close to them."
The reunion was heartwarming. They sang patriotic songs and "talked of life." Putin assured them, reports the Associated Press, that they would have good jobs and a "bright" future.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Mona Charen | Mon Jul, 26 | Share The Left Hates Conservatives 7.26.10Episode Description
Perhaps the most telling of the recent revelations of the liberal/left Journolist, a list consisting of about 400 major liberal/left journalists, is the depth of their hatred of conservatives. That they would consult with one another in order to protect candidate and then President Obama and in order to hurt Republicans is unfortunate and ugly. But what is jolting is the hatred of conservatives, as exemplified by the e-mail from an NPR reporter expressing her wish to personally see Rush Limbaugh die a painful death -- and the apparent absence of any objection from the other liberal journalists.
Every one of us on the right has seen this hatred. I am not referring to leftist bloggers or to anonymous extreme comments by angry leftists on conservative blogs -- such things exist on the right as well -- but to mainstream elite liberal journalists. There is simply nothing analogous among elite conservative journalists. Yes, nearly all conservatives believe that the left is leading America to ruin. But while there is plenty of conservative anger over this fact, there is little or nothing on the right to match the left's hatred of conservative individuals. Would mainstream conservative journalists e-mail one another wishes to be present while Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi or Michael Moore dies slowly and painfully of a heart attack?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Dennis Prager | Mon Jul, 26 | Share Some Welcome Signs of Life From Private Sector 7.23.10Episode Description
Grass somehow manages to grow up through small cracks in the sidewalk. Similarly, the American private sector somehow seems to be exerting itself despite the vast expansion of government by the Barack Obama administration and congressional Democrats.
Case in point: the announcement last week by four oil companies -- Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil and Shell -- that they are setting up a $1 billion joint venture to design, build and operate a rapid-response system to contain offshore oil spills as deep as and deeper than BP's Deepwater Horizon disaster.
Their goal is a system that can start mobilizing within 24 hours of an oil spill. They hope to have it up and running within 18 months.
I suppose one might ask why oil companies didn't do this before. But it seems a vivid contrast with the apparently hapless performance of the Mineral Management Service, recently renamed the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, which seems to have sat on out-of-date response plans for years and which was not able to call in equipment and personnel to respond to the April 20 BP spill for weeks or months.
Journalists tend to assume that effective regulation of potentially hazardous products can come only from government. But industry-generated organizations can provide it, as well.
Consider Underwriters Laboratories, founded in 1894, whose UL stickers come attached to regulator products. Or the Society of Automotive Engineers, founded in 1905, which sets standards for the automobile and other industries.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Michael Barone | Fri Jul, 23 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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Feminists Are Anti-Choice 2.2.12Episode Description
Horror of horrors! Lego has introduced a new line of gender-specific toys aimed at girls. I might not even have become aware of the controversy had it not been a topic of discussion on the all-female PBS talk show "To the Contrary," on which I frequently appear. That we are still debating the pros and cons of allowing boys and girls to prefer different play choices says a great deal about the failure of the feminist movement.
Lego, which markets plastic building blocks for everything from "Star Wars" fighting vehicles to Egyptian pyramids, has now introduced a line aimed at young girls. The new toys include Butterfly Beauty Shop, Stephanie's Outdoor Bakery, and Olivia's House, all featuring recognizable girl figures with long hair and feminine outlines, unlike the squat, sexless figures that characterize many of the company's other building sets. More importantly, these toys depict girls engaging in traditionally female activities and roles: getting their hair done, baking, caring for children.
The company says that it has introduced the new line because of customer demand. Little girls (or their mothers) apparently aren't lining up to buy Lego's Fangpyre Wrecking Balls or Pirates of the Caribbean. But feminist critics say that the real motive is to reinforce gender stereotypes and limit little girls' aspirations.
In fact, it's the feminists who want to limit women's choices. Their message to girls and young women is: If you're not exactly like men, you don't believe in equal rights.
Linda Chavez | Fri Feb, 3 | Share What Is It About 'No Free Lunch' That Obama Doesn't Understand? 2.2.12Episode Description
Obama's latest homeowner mortgage relief plan is perfect for him: It both is consistent with his ideology -- duh -- and allows him to buy more votes with someone else's money, all the while pretending there is in fact such a thing as a free lunch.
The painfully superficial liberal approach to poverty gets old, as does its corollary tenet that conservatives who reject liberals' failed ideas lack compassion. Indeed, Obama seemed to devote half the words in his prayer breakfast speech to proving that Scripture compels liberal policies.
Obama's latest proof that he cares more than we do is his proposal to "give every responsible homeowner in America a chance to save about $3,000 a year on their mortgage by refinancing at historically low rates. No more red tape. No more runaround from the banks."
This has all the elements. He frames the program as applying only to (SET ITAL) responsible (END ITAL) mortgagors; he personally gets credit for handing out this money from his legendary "stash"; government, not the market, dictates what the interest rate will be; government will wave its magic wand forbidding "red tape" and bureaucratic obstacles; and banks, one of his favorite targets, are demonized and lined up to be punished.
But haven't we had enough of this man's top-down manipulation of the market in the guise of helping people? Is he ever to be held accountable for similar failed programs he's already tried? How about that $75 billion mortgage relief plan he implemented in 2009? You know, the one he said would "give millions of families resigned to financial ruin a chance to rebuild"? The one he said would save 7 million to 9 million mortgages.
David Limbaugh | Fri Feb, 3 | Share Drop the Middle Class Talk 2.2.12Episode Description
In 1992, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton built his campaign for the White House on doing more for the "forgotten middle class." Calling it the "new covenant" (Democrats since Roosevelt have tried to work the words "new" or "deal" into their campaign slogans), Clinton promised to focus on the people he called "the backbone of the country, the ones who do the work and pay the taxes and send their children off to war."
Sound familiar? Here is Mitt Romney, the morning after the Florida primary: "I'm in this race because I care about Americans. I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich; they're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of ... America, the 90 percent, 95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling."
The usual firestorm erupted -- with liberals and conservatives alike pouncing on evidence of Romney's "tin ear." NPR anticipated (eagerly?) that Romney's words would show up in Democratic attack ads. And an exasperated Jonah Goldberg wondered in National Review Online whether Romney actually knows how to play this game: " . . . The concern is, after nearly a decade of running for president, if he can't get this stuff down now he never will."
Mona Charen | Fri Feb, 3 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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The Humiliation of Britain 10.27.10Episode Description
At the end of 2008, as the financial crisis hit with full force, the countries of the world divided into two groups: those whose leaders decided to muddle through, and China. Only the Chinese took seriously Milton Friedman?s and John Maynard Keynes?s argument that, when faced with the possibility of a depression, the first thing to do is use the government to intervene strategically in product and financial markets to maintain the flow of aggregate demand.
Then, at the start of 2010, the countries that had been muddling through divided into two groups: those where government credit was unimpaired continued to muddle through, while countries like Greece and Ireland, where government credit was impaired, had no choice but to pursue austerity and try to restore fiscal confidence.
Today, another split is occurring, this time between those countries that are continuing to muddle through and Great Britain. Even though the British government?s credit is still solid gold, Prime Minister David Cameron?s administration is about to embark on what may be the largest sustained fiscal contraction ever: a plan to shrink the government budget deficit by 9% of GDP over the next four years.
So far, China is doing the best in dealing with the financial crisis. The mudding-through countries lag behind. And those where confidence in the government?s liabilities has cracked, forcing the government into austerity, are doing worst.
Now the question is: will Britain ? where confidence in the government has not cracked and where austerity is not forced but chosen ? join the others at the bottom and serve as a horrible warning?
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Bradford DeLong | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The French Reactionary Revolution 10.26.10Episode Description
The expression ?the French exception? applies not only to culinary matters, but to social and economic issues as well. A majority of today?s French recognize that raising the retirement age is necessary to ensure the survival of the pension system. Yet, according to all public-opinion polls, close to 70% of the French support the demonstrators who are taking to the streets to block the very modest reforms introduced by President Nicolas Sarkozy?s government.
?The French exception? is the product of an encounter between a peculiar political and intellectual history and the rejection of the elites currently in power. To the dismay of their European neighbors, and in front of a bemused global public, the French are once again demonstrating their bizarre tradition of using revolutionary means to express extreme conservative leanings.
Unlike their predecessors in May 1968, today?s demonstrators are not in the streets to defend a different and better future. They are out there in significant numbers to protect the status quo, and to express their nostalgia for the past and their fear of the future.
And yet the reactionary/revolutionary movement of the type that we are witnessing ? a backlash against the inevitable consequences of globalization ? remains unmistakably French. It is driven by the extreme Cartesian rationality, verging on the absurd, of a country whose citizens continue to view their state in the same way that adolescents view their parents.
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Dominique Moisi | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The Scaremongers of the Roundtable 10.20.10Episode Description
How often do you see capitalists screaming and even going to court to defend the principle that legitimate owners cannot exercise any control over their property? It is not happening in Latin America or in socialist Sweden, but in the United States of America.
The capitalists in question are nothing short of the upper echelon of corporate America: the Business Roundtable, a powerful group composed of the CEOs of major US corporations, which promotes pro-business public policies. The object of their contention is the much-debated ?shareholders? access to proxy? rule, adopted by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in August to address the fundamental lack of accountability of corporate boards.
In the current system, corporate boards are self-perpetuating entities. To be elected, a board member needs to be nominated by the current board, where executives have considerable influence. As a result, board members owe their loyalty to the managers who directly or indirectly appoint them ? and thus have little incentive to dissent, lest they be punished with exclusion.
Even independent directors, often acclaimed as the solution to all problems, are subject to the same pressure. To change this state of affairs, institutional investors must be allowed to propose their own slate of directors. The possibility of being rejected in a real election would naturally make board members accountable to shareholders, indirectly making the executives accountable as well.
The SEC rule was an attempt to grant institutional investors this right. It did it in a very mild format. Companies with a public share worth less than $75 million were exempted, and shareholders who want to propose a slate must hold at least 3% of voting power of the company?s securities and have held it continuously for at least three years.
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Luigi Zingales | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Health Care?s Frequent Flyers 10.20.10Episode Description
For those of you who have seen the (American) movie ?Up in the Air,? think of the scene where George Clooney meets Vera Farmiga. He?s an outsourced human-resources executive who flies around the country firing people on behalf of timid managers; she?s a counterpart female road warrior. Their courtship ritual revolves around loyalty cards: he pulls out his American Airlines Executive Platinum card; she matches. Next, his Diamond VIP Hilton HHonors card; she calmly slaps hers on the rickety table where they are sharing drinks.
The unspoken message: points make you sexy. Airlines and hotels have known this for a long time. Dean Margolis, who long ago consulted for major airlines and is now applying the same techniques to healthy behavior, recalls wondering how to get executives to fly just a little more. It?s not by offering discounts, which benefit an executive?s company rather than the executive. Margolis asks: ?When the boss says ?Who wants to come to Philadelphia with me??, what?s going to get two people instead of one to say yes? To abandon their families, stand in line, and perhaps take a middle seat...?
Points, of course, will do the trick. The promise of being recognized at the airline counter, ushered to the front of the line, and, yes, looking like a big shot at the airport bar.
Margolis?s new company, MedRewards, plans to give people points for healthy behavior ? everything from taking their medications regularly to signing in at the gym more than five times a week. As in the airline business, the actual customers won?t be the users, but rather the vendors who want to influence users? behavior: pharmaceutical companies who want patients to buy their drugs, along with insurers and employers who want to lower long-term costs. (Employers, bless them, even have an interest in keeping people healthy!)
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Esther Dyson | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Obama at Halftime 10.12.10Episode Description
In September 2008, the global economy and financial system was hit by an earthquake, whose epicenter was in the United States. It was the end of the Bush administration. The presidential election was two months away. The timing, from the point of view of crisis management, could not have been worse.
The level of uncertainty about asset values, solvency, and the connectedness of balance sheets that prevailed at the time was extraordinarily high. Uncertainty bred fear, causing banks, businesses, and households to hoard cash. Consumption plummeted, taking down retail sales with it, and, after a short lag, employment and investment as well. Individually rational choices were giving rise to collectively irrational results.
These conditions had all the makings of a depression scenario, with credit rationing destroying businesses indiscriminately, and thus required fast, aggressive, and unconventional action by the US government and the Federal Reserve. The response, mounted by the Bush administration and taken over by the Obama administration, was all of the above. A combination of financial-sector recapitalization and rapid expansion of the Fed?s balance sheet prevented a complete credit lockup.
Policies sometimes missed their target and had to be modified. For example, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) originally targeted the purchase of complex securitized assets that had lost value and stopped trading, but had to be partly altered to direct infusions of capital into banks.
Financial support for Wall Street villains infuriated many, but no one proposed a better alternative at the time ? or has since. The Bush and Obama administrations both understood that wise policymaking in crisis circumstances requires selecting the least bad option, accepting the inevitable anger and criticism, and implementing the decision quickly. The first priority, after all, was to stabilize a highly dangerous situation.
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Michael Spence | Thu Oct, 28 | Share The Wars of Austerity 10.12.10Episode Description
I have become increasingly less hopeful about prospects for a rapid recovery from the global recession. Coordinated fiscal expansion ($5 trillion) by the world?s leading governments arrested the downward slide, but failed to produce a healthy rebound. The current frustration is summed up by The Economist?s recent cover headline: ?Grow, dammit, grow.?
There are two reasons to be pessimistic. The first reason is the premature withdrawal of the ?stimulus? measures agreed upon by the G-20 in London in April 2009. All the main countries are now committed to slashing their budget deficits.
The second reason is that nothing has been done to address the problem of current-account imbalances. Indeed, the talk nowadays of currency wars leading to trade wars is reminiscent of the disastrous experience of the 1930?s.
The problem of current-account imbalances is closely linked to the existence of a world savings glut. One part of the world, led by China, earns more than it spends, whereas another part, notably the United States, spends more than it earns. Provided the surplus countries invest in the deficit countries, these imbalances pose no macroeconomic problem.
Indeed, this was the nineteenth-century pattern. A system of foreign investment, pivoting on London, channeled the savings of rich (or surplus) countries to the poor (or deficit) countries. Despite many financial crises and defaults, this creditor-debtor relationship worked, on the whole, to the benefit of both sides. Rich-country investors earned a higher rate of return than they would at home, and poor-country recipients raised the development finance they needed. There was no persistent tendency to deflation.
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Robert Skidelsky | Thu Oct, 28 | Share Only the Weak Survive 10.12.10Episode Description
The risk of global currency and trade wars is rising, with most economies now engaged in competitive devaluations. All are playing a game that some must lose.
Today?s tensions are rooted in paralysis on global rebalancing. Over-spending countries ? such as the United States and other ?Anglo-Saxon? economies ? that were over-leveraged and running current-account deficits now must save more and spend less on domestic demand. To maintain growth, they need a nominal and real depreciation of their currency to reduce their trade deficits. But over-saving countries ? such as China, Japan, and Germany ? that were running current-account surpluses are resisting their currencies? nominal appreciation. A higher exchange rate would reduce their current-account surpluses, because they are unable or unwilling to reduce their savings and sustain growth through higher spending on domestic consumption.
Within the eurozone, this problem is exacerbated by the fact that Germany, with its large surpluses, can live with a stronger euro, whereas the PIIGS (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and Spain) cannot. On the contrary, with their large external deficits, the PIIGS need a sharp depreciation to restore growth as they implement painful fiscal and other structural reforms.
A world where over-spending countries need to reduce domestic demand and boost net exports, while over-saving countries are unwilling to reduce their reliance on export-led growth, is a world where currency tensions must inevitably come to a boil. Aside from the eurozone, the US, Japan, and the United Kingdom all need a weaker currency. Even Switzerland is intervening to weaken the franc.
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Nouriel Roubini | Thu Oct, 28 | Share
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Netanyahu Is Not the Problem 11.10.11Episode Description
At the G20 Summit last week in Cannes, Nicolas Sarkozy held only four private meetings. One was with Barack Obama and a second was with Manmohan Singh, prime minister of India. (It?s not clear whether Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico, met alone with the French president or whether his country was a fully deserved separate topic on the agenda, perhaps as a ?disaster in the process.?) The other two privileged to have Sarkozy alone face-to-face were Hu Jintao, president of the People?s Republic of China, and William Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, literally the only people in attendance representing enterprises that are financially solvent. Take a look at these primarily optimistic documents and try to assess the honesty of the reports. Actually, this is the measure of our politics: deception, self-deception, duplicity, hypocrisy, pretense.
It was at this jamboree of whoppers that Sarkozy chose to confide to President Obama that he ?can?t stand Netanyahu anymore. He is a liar.? And the president responded, sort of in kind: ?You?re fed up with him. But I have to deal with him every day.? Of course, this was one of those moments that journalists dream about. The microphone was on when it was supposed to be off. Now, Sarkozy is not exactly known for his verisimilitude and neither is Obama, whose foreign policy, in particular, is based on the silliest improvisations of history. He has certainly made up his narratives on Muslim culture, in general, and on American-Arab relations, in particular. This accumulated flim-flam has made U.S. policy in the orbit of the crescent a laughing-stock for, well, everyone.
Martin Peretz | Fri Nov, 11 | Share How Congress?s Showdown With China Puts Obama in a Serious Bind 10.06.11Episode Description
While all of Washington fastened its gaze on Chris Christie, the most important issue of the week?maybe of the year?was playing out on the floor of the Senate. By a margin of 79 to 19, senators agreed to consider a measure that would allow the United States to impose tariffs on another country if the Treasury found its currency to be ?misaligned.? As the Wall Street Journal points out, this is a less demanding standard than current law, which ?requires a finding of intentional manipulation.? If this newfound bipartisan comity in Congress over the issue of confronting China culminates in a bill that passes both houses, it will put Obama in a serious bind: either adopt a similarly hawkish stance and risk a trade war, or issue a veto that would expose him to attack from the Republican nominee and provoke a populist backlash from workers and communities throughout America?s hard-pressed manufacturing sector.
The huge bipartisan majority on the procedural question this week virtually guarantees that the bill will make it through the Senate, and it illuminates the changing contours of the China trade issue. Nearly every Democrat voted to proceed; Washington?s Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray and (intriguingly) Claire McCaskill of Missouri were the only dissidents. And fully 31 of the 47 Senate Republicans supported the motion as well, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander, Policy Committee Chairman John Thune, and John Cornyn, who heads the committee responsible for electing more Republicans to the Senate in 2012. Among the party?s leadership, John Kyl stood alone in opposition.
William Galston | Thu Oct, 6 | Share How Ahmadinejad?s Regime Tried - and Failed - to Break One Protester's Spirit 9.22.11Episode Description
As the world grants an audience to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, we would be better served to look upon Samiye Tohidlou. Samiye is a child of the Iranian revolution, born in 1979, when the current regime came to power. She comes from a family of educators; her father was a teacher who declared, after the arrest of his daughter, that he had been a staunch supporter of the revolution. Samiye was herself a doctoral student in sociology at Tehran University?the country?s oldest and most venerable institution?and an active member of the Islamic Student Association.
And she was a volunteer for Mir Hussein Mousavi?s presidential campaign in 2009. When the regime announced Ahmadinejad the winner even before the polls closed, in Tehran alone three million people took to the streets to protest what they considered to be an electoral putsch. Samiye had a brilliant and elegantly simple idea. She suggested that protesters create an uninterrupted chain of humanity, from Tehran?s rich, northern neighborhoods to the south?s poorest ghettoes. The only connective thread of this long chain was a green ribbon, symbolizing the movement that had emerged in opposition to the electoral coup.
Abbas Milani | Thu Sep, 22 | Share Texas Dispatch: How Ron Paul Sparked a Movement - Only to Lose his District 9.22.11Episode Description
Ron Paul doesn?t like Rick Perry. And if Thursday?s debate is anything like the last two, you?ll hear about it tonight. At the first GOP debate to feature Perry, Paul pointed to the governor?s past as a Democrat and cited his support for Clinton-era efforts at healthcare reform. In an ad earlier this month, Paul?s campaign dredged up Perry?s 1988 support for Al Gore. ?America must decide who to trust,? a voice in the ad proclaims, ?Al Gore?s Texas cheerleader or the one who stood with Reagan.? And in an open letter to Perry, Paul?s campaign chair spelled out the line of criticism once more: ?We don?t think the fact that you used to be a Democrat is the big problem here. The real problem is that, too often, you still act like one.?
For all Paul?s efforts, however, the criticism just hasn?t stuck. Indeed, if anything, Perry has garnered attention, both negative and positive, for the ways in which his criticisms of Medicare and Social Security?stated most clearly in his 2010 book Fed Up!?mirror those of his cranky rival from the right. And, in an ironic twist of fate, while Perry is reaping the benefits of such radical stances, Paul, their longtime proponent, is struggling to stay relevant. Despite his third place standing in most polls, Paul gets hardly any media attention. He has almost no friends in the GOP establishment. And when he ends his quixotic presidential bid, he plans to retire from Congress rather than run in his newly redrawn district, which state GOP legislators recently made much more difficult for him to hold onto. As Jason Stanford, a longtime Democratic campaign consultant in the state, puts it: ?The paradox of Ron Paul is that he?s never been more influential or less popular in Texas.? What happened?
Abby Rapoport | Thu Sep, 22 | Share Hillary Clinton?s Embarrassing, Disingenuous Equivocating on the Crisis in Sudan 5.23.11Episode Description
In a recent op-ed in The Washington Post about the independence of South Sudan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton offered a conspicuous example of the Obama administration?s policy of equivocation when it comes to the world?s newest nation and the country it split from last weekend. Namely, the op-ed disingenuously equated the Khartoum regime with its adversaries in South Sudan, in the embattled regions of South Kordofan and Abyei, and in Darfur.
The evident logic of such false equivalence is that it?s necessary to keep Khartoum engaged in negotiations: If ?both sides,? as Clinton refers to them repeatedly, are equally responsible for violence and for the failure to resolve outstanding issues like the North-Southborder delineation, then diplomacy will be able to exert pressure to compromise. Never mind that compromise?indeed, many compromises?have already been made by the South; the real problem here is that President Omar Al Bashir?s regime has refused to live up to the agreements.
Eric Reeves | Thu Jul, 14 | Share The Hawk 5.23.11Episode Description
When America traded George W. Bush for Barack Obama, few thought the result would be an escalation in the American war on terror. Swathes of U.S. conservatives (but also some liberals) were ready to dismiss President Obama as too naïve and idealistic to be president in the face of a heightened terrorist threat. Moderates did not believe that a campaign based on hope and change would cause Al Qaeda terrorists to fear this president more than the previous one. In Europe, meanwhile, Obama was seen as someone who would roll back the vulgarities of the war and make Europe feel good again about its more police-driven approach to terrorism.
Today, however, the handful of dissenters from this line of thinking looks prescient. Following the death of Osama bin Laden, it is clear Obama won?t be outflanked by the right on counterterrorism. Sending a team of operatives into Pakistan without that country?s knowledge because we believed (correctly) that bin Laden was there is not the work of a softie. Yet that decision is only one achievement in Obama?s well-established, hawkish approach to the war on terror?an approach that, whatever one thinks of its ethical merits, will serve him well in his reelection campaign.
Robin Simcox | Tue May, 24 | Share After Osama bin Laden 5.2.11Episode Description
Al Qaeda has been on the run and in deterioration, unable to launch a spectacular attack like that of September 11 for quite some time now. With the death of Osama bin Laden, this demise will continue?and perhaps be expedited. Still, the threat of jihadist terrorism remains, namely in the short-term, and the American counter-terrorism community would be well-advised to maintain its vigilance in the coming months. The immediate reaction of Al Qaeda and its sympathizers to bin Laden?s death is sure to be one of shock and dismay, but it?s only a matter of time before those emotions give way to anger. And the irate have a tendency to lash out.
Al Qaeda was depreciating before bin Laden?s death. For nearly a decade, U.S. military operations have had its senior leadership in disarray. As drone strikes escalated under the Obama administration, the core of the Al Qaeda seemed to be more concerned about surviving the night than seizing the day. This, in part, explains why the organization was never able to re-group after September 11 to launch another major attack against the U.S. Even when Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, were able to release messages, they increasingly fell flat.
Louis Klarevas | Mon May, 2 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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The Peacenik Republican 01.30.12Episode Description
So far in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has more than doubled the number of votes he received in Iowa in 2008, more than tripled his vote count in New Hampshire, and nearly quintupled his vote count in South Carolina.
To achive this, the libertarian-leaning Paul has had to become more slick and political in his campaigning, while retaining credibility by sticking to his specific plan to chop federal spending by $1 trillion dollars. Despite the disappointment many felt about Paul?s third-place finish in Iowa, and Paul's current last-place polling in Florida, Paul has said he's not going anywhere.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Lucy Steigerwald | Sun Jan, 22 | Share Don't Trust Your Instincts 01.19.12Episode Description
Simple answers are so satisfying: Green jobs will fix the economy. Stimulus will create jobs. Charity helps people more than commerce. Everyone should vote.
Well, all those instinctive solutions are wrong. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out in The Fatal Conceit, it's a problem that in our complex, extended economy, we rely on instincts developed during our ancestors' existence in small bands. In those old days, everyone knew everyone else, so affairs could be micromanaged. Today, we live in a global economy where strangers deal with each other. The rules need to be different.
Hayek said: "The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
John Stossel | Fri Jan, 20 | Share End of the Line for the Bullet Train 01.19.12Episode Description
The way high-speed rail projects have been collapsing around the world, you?d think they were corrupt, outrageously expensive, fiscally ruinous, poorly planned government efforts to build a 19th century means of transportation for which there?s no demand.
The Obama Administration?s bullet-train dream is dead. Florida Gov. Rick Scott last year rejected $2 billion in federal funds rather than commit the Sunshine State to such an expensive project. California?s high-speed rail effort is in turmoil, recently suffered a purge of top management, and is unlikely to meet its September deadline to break ground on a federally mandated leg universally termed the ?train to nowhere.?
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Tim Cavanaugh | Fri Jan, 20 | Share Space on Earth 01.17.12Episode Description
The sight is a wickedly thin line of shimmering and vibrant pale green. The sensation is a warm pulse. The sound is muffled to insensibility by high-grade ear protection. On my tape recorder later, however, I hear it: a sharp-edged roaring whoosh that strains my speakers to the breaking point.
It?s an honest-to-goodness rocket engine, designed to shift a spaceship floating in weightless suborbit in order to give a passenger a different viewpoint, or to position the craft for safe re-entry to Earth?s atmosphere and gravity well. It?s burning a proprietary, nontoxic fuel mixture.
I?m at the Mojave Spaceport?the private general aviation airfield where SpaceShipOne, the first private vehicle to zip twice between space and back, first took off in 2004. That?s the same year that Mojave became certified by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) as the nation?s first private ?spaceport,? certified to send vehicles and people out of this world. Seven years later, more than a handful of commercial space companies operate out of this sprawling complex of runways, hangars, and airplane bits, and it?s no longer the only private spaceport in America.
From OutloudOpinion - For Podcasts of IBDeditorials, The New Republic, and Over 30 Syndicated Columnists, go to www.outloudopinion.com
Brian Doherty | Thu Jan, 19 | Share More » See more articles from this podcast.
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April - Reasserting Federalism in Defense of Liberty - Ken CuccinelliEpisode Description
SOME FAVORITE VIRGINIANS OF MINE who inspired and crafted our federal Constitution?Mason, Madison, Jefferson, and Henry?also drafted the Constitution of Virginia. And in the latter, they included a critical statement that said, ?No free government, nor the blessings of liberty, can be preserved . . . but by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.?
Our founders well understood that our liberty could not be preserved without frequently referring back to first principles. But while they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to defend those principles, we have often taken them for granted, as we have become complacent in thinking that government will take care of every problem.
We have asked government to do more for us, and all the government asks for in return is a little bit more of our liberty. Over the decades, we kept asking. And because the courts and the politicians were all too happy to oblige, regardless of what the Constitution said, we no longer have a federal government of limited powers. We have an overreaching central government?a government that seeks to plan and control virtually every aspect of our lives and our economy, from health care, to energy, to automobile manufacturing, to banking and insurance.
Thankfully, though, in the last several years, people have woken up and are pushing back. With this pushback, we are seeing the idea of federalism reemerge. People want to return to a government of limited, enumerated powers, and an arrangement in which states serve as a check when the federal government oversteps its constitutional bounds.
In the current lawsuits brought by the states over health care and against the EPA, state governments are pushing back and reasserting federalism as the Founders intended them to do. Indeed, I am not aware of a time in history when this many states have sued the federal government to rein in its power: Today, more than half are parties to lawsuits against the new health care act and its individual health insurance mandate.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Thu Apr, 28 | Share March - The Not So Dismal Science: Humanitarians v. Economists - William McGurnEpisode Description
THIS EVENING I PROPOSE to take on one of the greatest libels in the English language: the description of economics as ?the dismal science.? I hold a different view?that when it comes to seeing the potential in even the most desperate citizens of this earth, our economists, business leaders, and champions of a commercial republic are often far ahead of our progressives, artists, and humanitarians. And therein lies my tale.
Hillsdale College is very much a part of this drama. For ?dismal science? was born as an epithet meant to dismiss those arguing that slaves deserved their freedom. In fact, the first recorded mention of the phrase ?dismal science? occurs in 1849?just five years after Hillsdale was founded. As the dates suggest, both Hillsdale?s founding and the caricature ?dismal science? were not unrelated to a great debate in England that in our nation would be resolved by civil war.
Tonight I hope to persuade you that to call economics the ?dismal science? has it exactly backwards?that it is the economists and businessmen who hold the hopeful view of life, and that far from being fundamentally opposed, the admirers of Adam Smith have more in common with the followers of the Good Book than we might suppose.
The Anti-Slavery Divide
Let?s start with ?dismal science? itself. Even those who know nothing about economics have heard the term. A few might even know that it was Thomas Carlyle who came up with it.
Very few know the salient point: Carlyle deployed the term in a magazine polemic entitled ?An Occasional Discourse on the Negro Question.? In that essay, Carlyle savaged the two groups who were leading the British fight against slavery: economists and evangelicals. The latter were sometimes abbreviated to ?Exeter Hall??a reference to the London building that served as the center of British evangelism and philanthropy.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Thu Mar, 31 | Share January - It's Never Just the Economy, Stupid - Brian T. KennedyEpisode Description
WE ARE OFTEN TOLD that we possess the most powerful military in the world and that we will face no serious threat for some time to come. We are comforted with three reassurances aimed at deflecting any serious discussion of national security: (1) that Islam is a religion of peace; (2) that we will never go to war with China because our economic interests are intertwined; and (3) that America won the Cold War and Russia is no longer our enemy. But these reassurances are myths, propagated on the right and left alike. We believe them at our peril, because serious threats are already upon us.
Let me begin with Islam. We were assured that it was a religion of peace immediately following September 11. President Bush, a good man, believed or was persuaded that true Islam was not that different from Judaism or Christianity. He said in a speech in October 2001, just a month after the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon: ?Islam is a vibrant faith. . . . We honor its traditions. Our enemy does not. Our enemy doesn?t follow the great traditions of Islam. They?ve hijacked a great religion.? But unfortunately, Mr. Bush was trying to understand Islam as we would like it to be rather than how countless devout Muslims understand it.
Organizationally, Islam is built around a belief in God or Allah, but it is equally a political ideology organized around the Koran and the teachings of its founder Muhammad. Whereas Christianity teaches that we should render unto Caesar what is Caesar?s and unto God what is God?s?allowing for a non-theocratic political tradition to develop in the West, culminating in the principles of civil and religious liberty in the American founding?Islam teaches that to disagree with or even reinterpret the Koran?s 6000 odd verses, organized into 114 chapters or Suras and dealing as fully with law and politics as with matters of faith, is punishable by death.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Tue Feb, 15 | Share October - The Presidency and the Constitution - Mike PenceEpisode Description
THE PRESIDENCY is the most visible thread that runs through the tapestry of the American government. More often than not, for good or for ill, it sets the tone for the other branches and spurs the expectations of the people. Its powers are vast and consequential, its requirements impossible for mortals to fulfill without humility and insistent attention to its purpose as set forth in the Constitution of the United States.
Isn?t it amazing, given the great and momentous nature of the office, that those who seek it seldom pause to consider what they are seeking? Rather, unconstrained by principle or reflection, there is a mad rush toward something that, once its powers are seized, the new president can wield as an instrument with which to transform the nation and the people according to his highest aspirations.
But, other than in a crisis of the house divided, the presidency is neither fit nor intended to be such an instrument. When it is made that, the country sustains a wound, and cries out justly and indignantly. And what the nation says is the theme of this address. What it says?informed by its long history, impelled by the laws of nature and nature?s God?is that we as a people are not to be ruled and not to be commanded. It says that the president should never forget this; that he has not risen above us, but is merely one of us, chosen by ballot, dismissed after his term, tasked not to transform and work his will upon us, but to bear the weight of decision and to carry out faithfully the design laid down in the Constitution in accordance with the Declaration of Independence.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Sat Oct, 23 | Share July/Aug - The Tea Parties and the Future of Liberty - Stephen F. HayesEpisode Description
Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. Within a month he signed a $787 billion ?stimulus package? with virtually no Republican support. It was necessary, we were told, to keep unemployment under eight percent. Overnight, the federal government had, as one of its highest priorities, weatherizing government buildings and housing projects. Streets and highways in no need of repair would be broken up and repaved. The Department of Transportation and other government agencies would spend millions on signs advertising the supposed benefits of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. I saw one of them on Roosevelt Island in Washington, D.C. It boasted that the federal park would be receiving a generous grant to facilitate the involvement of local youth in the removal of ?non-indigenous plants.? In other words, kids would be weeding. We need a sign to announce that? And this was going to save the economy?
Then there was American Recovery and Reinvestment Act project number 1R01AA01658001A, a study entitled: ?Malt Liquor and Marijuana: Factors in their Concurrent Versus Separate Use.? I?m not making this up. This is a $400,000 project being directed by a professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The following is from the official abstract: ?We appreciate the opportunity to refocus this application to achieve a single important aim related to our understanding of young adults? use of male [sic] liquor (ML), other alcoholic beverages, and marijuana (MJ), all of which confer high risks for experiencing negative consequences, including addiction. As we have noted, reviews of this grant application have noted numerous strength [sic], which are summarized below.?
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Wed Sep, 1 | Share May/June - The New New Deal - Charles R. KeslerEpisode Description
In President Obama, conservatives face the most formidable liberal politician in at least a generation. In 2008, he won the presidency with a majority of the popular vote?something a Democrat had not done since Jimmy Carter?s squeaker in 1976?and handily increased the Democrats? control of both houses of Congress. Measured against roughly two centuries worth of presidential victories by Democratic non-incumbents, his win as a percentage of the popular vote comes in third behind FDR?s in 1932 and Andrew Jackson?s in 1828.
More importantly, Obama won election not as a status quo liberal, but as an ambitious reformer. Far from being content with incremental gains, he set his sights on major systemic change in health care, energy and environmental policy, taxation, financial regulation, education, and even immigration, all pursued as elements of a grand strategy to ?remake America.? In other words, he longs to be another FDR, building a New New Deal for the 21st century, dictating the politics of his age, and enshrining the Democrats as the new majority party for several decades to come. Suddenly, the era of big government being over is over; and tax-and-spend liberalism is back with a vengeance. We face a $1.4 trillion federal deficit this fiscal year alone and $10-12 trillion in total debt over the coming decade.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Wed Jun, 16 | Share April - The Coming Constitutional Debate - Stephen MarkmanEpisode Description
AS ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL under President Ronald Reagan, I prepared a report for Attorney General Edwin Meese entitled ?The Constitution in the Year 2000: Choices Ahead.? This report sought to identify a range of areas in which significant constitutional controversy could be expected over the next 20 years. As critical as I believe those controversies were, they pale in significance before the controversies that will arise over the next several decades. The resolution of these emerging controversies will determine whether the Constitution of 2030 bears any resemblance to the Constitution of 1787?the Framers? Constitution that has guided this nation for most of its first two centuries and has rendered it the freest, most prosperous, and most creative nation in the history of the world.
Proponents of a ?21st century constitution? or ?living constitution? aim to transform our nation?s supreme law beyond recognition?and with a minimum of public attention and debate. Indeed, if there is an overarching theme to what they wish to achieve, it is the diminishment of the democratic and representative processes of American government. It is the replacement of a system of republican government, in which the constitution is largely focused upon the architecture of government in order to minimize the likelihood of abuse of power, with a system of judicial government, in which substantive policy outcomes are increasingly determined by federal judges. Rather than merely defining broad rules of the game for the legislative and executive branches of government, the new constitution would compel specific outcomes.
Brought to you by OutloudOpinion.com
Imprimis | Tue Apr, 27 | Share More » Go to our Imprimis Page.
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