Biting the hand that feeds me, I think it is a bad idea that President Barack Obama is urging Congress to kick in an extra one-lump $250 to each of the 57 million seniors, veterans and people with disabilities because they will not receive cost-of-living increases in 2010 from Social Security benefits. It’s not that I prefer to go without. If Congress goes along with the president, and key leaders say...

Symbolism comes with a heavy hand these days as Stock Exchange traders cheer at the Dow hitting 10,000 while the national employment rate heads for double digits. The disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street keeps widening as money jugglers, who caused the credit crisis that led to bailouts with taxpayer billions, are getting record bonuses while those who do real work in the world, such as airline pilots,...

I would like to invite all writers, editors, commentators and readers to make some major predictions for the future that they believe will transpire by or around certain future dates. I ran this idea by Joe Gandelman last week who told me to run with it. These “revelations” can concern science, technology, environment, wars and militaries, climate change, healthcare, religion, politics, economics, business,...

What is common between Saudi and Chinese officials/leaders? Whenever they speak be prepared to leave a lot of room for interpretations. So let’s see what it means when Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal (the long-time director general of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service, the Al Mukhabarat Al Aamah, and the Saudi ambassador to the US) finds similarities between Osama bin-Laden and Robin Hood, a hero...

As I’m sure you all know the Dow closed on Wednesday above the 10,000 mark, the first time it has done so since October of 2008. The boost was largely the result of good earnings reports from Intel and JP Morgan/Chase. Certainly all of these things are good and I am not going to try and dismiss them as otherwise. I firmly believe that good news is good news no matter what. However at the same time I am...

Afghanistan produces over 90% of the world’s opium, the main ingredient in heroin. Many Afghans, among its predominantly rural population of around 28 million, simply grow and cultivate opium poppies across some of its vast territory that is equal in size to the state of Texas. Most of Afghanistan is very arid and mountainous, not fit for any agriculture or productive human activities. The export value...

From Yahoo: Just one year from the much discussed “death of Wall Street,” major U.S. banks and securities firms are set to pay their employees about $140 billion this year, according to a study by the Wall Street Journal. That’s a record level, just passing the pay levels of the boom year of 2007. Elsewhere people are taking the largest pay cuts since the Depression: The Bureau of Labor Statistics...

Some good news/bad news on the economic front. The good news is that the Dow has approached 10,000. The bad news is that retail sales are still lousy. The good news: Stocks rallied Wednesday morning, with the Dow industrials nearly hitting the 10,000 level for the first time in a year, following better-than-expected quarterly profit reports from Intel and JPMorgan Chase. The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU)...

As a journalism teacher I am often asked: Should media cater to what interests the public or PUBLIC INTEREST? In recent times the media, with honorable exceptions, has brazenly catered to the lowest common denominator (generally pandering to the basest instincts) under the cloak of infotainment. Arianna Huffington, the moving spirit behind Huffington Post, has started HuffPost Impact to talk about issues that...

How much danger terrorists pose in Britain? “The campaign I am talking about is not being planned by Jihadis or fringe Irish nationalists but by white ‘neo-Nazis’ who want to murder Asians, black people, Jews and gays in the bizarre belief it will trigger a ‘race war’, says Johann Hari in The Independent. “The police are warning ever-more urgently that similar attacks seem...

Yesterday I wrote a post questioning the need for so many countries in the 21st Century, particular vulgar, repressive military dictatorships, to have nuclear weapons. My premise was not the relative civility of non-nuclear nations vis-à-vis those that possessed nuclear weapons but the proper use of U.S. military power. However, many nice places can be found that have no nuclear arms, nor are they signatories...

The Senate Finance Committee finally voted 14-9 its sweeping health care bill out of committee Tuesday with the lone Republican Olympia Snowe of Maine on board. Whoopty doo. Now maybe we can get down to business and fix the system. This bill is a massive subsidy to private insurance carriers who are not happy because it falls short of universal coverage which would mean more bucks in their pockets with little...

Health care reform is now formally on the move with the Senate Finance Committee’s passage of a historic bill that got the support of all Democrats and one moderate Republican. If it isn’t the undisputed bipartisan vote that the White House sought, it isn’t the totally Democratic party vote that the White House feared. So it’s likely to advance the drive to come up with a bill by the...

The Huffington Post reports: Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said Tuesday that she intends to vote for the Senate Finance Committee’s health care reform package. She cautioned that her vote should be seen as a sign of her faith in the process going forward, not as support for the final package that will arrive on the Senate floor. “Is this bill all that I would want? Far from it,” said Snowe....

The prediction: It’ll pass on a straight party line vote.

What’s so lucrative about selling chicken to China? We sell them parts of the bird that we won’t eat – like the feet. Worth just a few cents a pound in the U.S., American chicken feet fetch 60-80 cents a pound in China. From the Xinjingbao of the People’s Republic of China, this strategy session from Chinese researcher Xue Chung explains more than you ever wanted to know about what China...

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The big political news story of the day — in fact, one of the biggest arguably in decades — will be the perhaps pivotal Senate Finance Committee vote on health care legislation. And, in that vote, most political eyes will be focused on Maine’s Republican Senator Olympia Snowe. Will she vote for the plan and give it at least a smattering of bipartisan aura? And, if she does, will she face political...

Article I, Section 9, of the U.S. Constitution states in part: “…No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince or foreign State.” The best precipitating motive behind the inclusion of this...

Granny’s tales, and their actions/thinking, have remarkable similarities be they Christians, Jews, Muslims or Hindus. Perhaps it’s because of them the world survives despite the harshness and cruelty that we see around us. Vlasta Molak, a friend, has kindly sent me a moving story of one such grandmother, who at times appears as if she was mine. Here is an excerpt in the NYT from a book to be published...

Charlie Rangel is a charming, engaging fellow. The kind of man you would enjoy having a beer. Most of the journalists who deal with him in Congress like him because he is forthright even when spinning a topic in his favor. A Korean war hero, Rangel’s Harlem voters have elected him to 20 terms, vaunting him to a position of power and by seniority his Democratic comrades have selected him as chairman of...

Intellectual Conservatism Isn’t Dead: Maintaining a Consistent Philosophy by Rick Moran This is the last in my series on the state of intellectual conservatism. Previous articles can be found in order here, and here, and here, and here. If, as we’ve discovered, intellectual conservatism has been marginalized, and its adherents are in bad odor with much of the base, then conservatism as it is advanced...

The Democrats in Congress and the Administration are aghast that the health insurance lobby has announced their subtle dismay with the Baucus proposed healthcare reforms. Big Insurance’s financial experts project that these reforms may increase health insurance costs to the majority of insured Americans even faster than originally projected without reforms. They cite the delay until 2013 in the mandate...

WASHINGTON — It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens. His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan figure, much loved in European capitals because he is the change they have...

Van Gujjars are India’s legendary & colorful nomads, mostly Muslims, tending to their buffaloes in the green pasture land in the Himalayas or its foothills. Their entry into forests, their abode for centuries, is now being increasingly blocked in the name of environmental protection. The New York Times brings this poignant story alive in a beautiful photo-essay Showcase: Traveling With the Van Gujjar...