T.O.T.N.-Thoughts On The News, 9/27/11

First a thought on some of yesterday's.  (If the links don't work Google is your friend.) Susan Collins: The Economy Needs a Regulation Time-Out "America needs a "time-out" from the regulations that discourage job creation and hurt our economy. I have introduced legislation to impose a one-year moratorium on any "significant" new rules that would …

T.O.T.N. – Thoughts On The News, 9/22/2011

Troy Davis executed: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44592285/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/#.Tnt9J6N5mSM I'm generally pro-death penalty, definitely anti- executing innocents. It's sad they couldn't have given a stay and more time, still the powers that be must have felt that after 30 years all avenues had been exhausted. Nasty business regardless. Meg Whitman to be named head of HP: http://bottomline.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/09/22/7900871-meg-whitman-to-be-named-new-head-of-h-p-report-says She did well …

The Price of Freedom

Men and women.  That's the price of freedom. Living and dead.  Yes, yes, "...in the long run we all are dead" (Keynes).  The price of freedom is that a lot of people don't get a chance at the long run.  They die too soon, too young, on a distant, unfamiliar battlefield somewhere. I was visiting …

What are YOU reading? …and other musings

But enough about you. Today while I walked KaCee the Wonder Dog along side the Dam Road I listened to most of the Werner Erhard CD: Transformation: The Life And Legacy Of Werner Erhard.  (Listening is almost the same as reading, and listening about Werner is valuable literature indeed.)  It was poignant, moving, profound.  I recommend …

Republicans’ Debate Mon. 13 June

Is this old news now?  Has the dust settled?  I watched one hr+ of the 2 hours scheduled.  I liked it.  I liked the candidates (some more than others) and I liked what they said.  I think this country has a good number from which to choose their replacement for Barack Obama. That seemed to …

The Republican Who Can Win

Argue with me people! With civility of course, but argue. Exchange ideas. Inform me. I want to get this. I'm not a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon so I need your help. Dorothy Rabinowitz opines in the WSJ (The Republican Who Can Win) that the 2012 Republican candidate will require a passion for ideas …

NYT Slams Obama Administration!

If this isn't a harbinger of doom for the anointed one's 2012 re-election then nothing is. In two separate articles (one 'reporting', the other 'editorial, though it's often hard to tell the difference in this publication) the New York Times criticized (yes, actually CRITICIZED) the Obama Administration.  (For those of you in Rio Lindo, this …

Give Me A Break by John Stossel

Oh these libertine Libertarians.  Will they never stop chanting for individual rights and self-responsibility? What does Stossel think this is, a free country? His book Give Me a Break : How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media... by John Stossel (Feb 1, 2005) seems to speculate that it could be, …

Reading Ann Coulter

She's smart, very smart.  She's good looking.  She has a supremely acerbic, acidic, wryly humorous wit.  She's in love with herself I suspect.  I know I am.  In love with myself that is, or very very fond of at least.  A healthy dose of egoism along with a pinch, dash, or splash of egotism might …

Good fiction themes

I wish I could write fiction. The likelihood of that happening is the same as "I wish I was taller". I admire anyone who can make up a story. The more they can make up, and the more engrossing it is, the more I admire them. Still, I was contemplating a fiction theme, or plot, …

Skiing, Libya, Sowell, Decisions

Coppah’ was good skiing Tuesday.  Moderately hard-packed with some soft on top.  Did a run down Spaulding Bowl  to the Resolution Chair, not a regular area for my aging abilities.  Skied a somewhat icy run under the Blackjack Chair, then went to Union Meadow and side-slipped through some narrow tree runs, out of my league …

‘Symbolic?’ repeal of Health Care bill

Symbolic indeed.  Republicans FINALLY stuck to their principles for once.  What a novel idea. The New York Times portrays the recent House vote as symbolic: House Votes for Repeal of Health Law in Symbolic Act The Wall Street Journal portrays it as historic: The Repeal Vote Noteworthy is that the House vote to pass the …

Seattle Police Officer Killings

I’m outraged. Unmitigated, un-tempered, multiple expletives deleted, outraged.  While we hand out get-out-of-jail-early cards due to “budget constraints” on our prison systems, we have insane people running amok across the country killing police officers, campus students, family members, and women en masse.  Enough of this turn-the-other-cheek, where did we go wrong and slight you.  Where …

Am I DONE yet?

Blogging, that is. Don't YOU wish! I am getting caught up. I have a brief blog drafted on military service. I'd also like to explore, for my own edification, the topic of majority rule (that's freedom isn't it, except we don't want to crush the individual (freedom for little old me) in the process, do …

Paul Krugman is NUTZ! on climate change

Economics Nobel prize-winner Krugman now opinionates on EVERYTHING under the sun from the pages of the NY Times.  In his 28 June Op-Ed Betraying the Planet he says of the no-votes on the recent House climate change bill: “And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching …

A Will for Health Care

Writer George F. Will, that is.  He wrote yet another, reasoned and rational piece in the Washington Post recently titled A Health 'Reform' To Regret.  The very same piece appeared in the Sunday, June 28, Denver Post with the title Don't make bad health care worse. From my reading I don’t get that Will is …

Debunking Canadian health care myths

Speaking of Health Care, this guest commentary in the Denver Post recently, Debunking Canadian health care myths, just smacked me in the face when I read it.  Despite the arguable debunking of myths throughout, the first and last paragraphs speak volumes: First: "As a Canadian living in the United States for the past 17 years, …

Clarence Thomas & Sonia Sotomayor

I was casting about for some reading recently and stumbled across the Clarence Thomas auto-bio My Grandfather’s Son – A Memoir.  I thought it might be interesting to read about a current Supreme Court Justice who might also have empathy based on ethnicity and race.  It turned out to be a speedy and thought provoking …

White Supremacists and Abortionists

REF: the Holocaust museum attack this one is annoying the heck out of me, to put it mildly.  Idiots, idiots, idiots.  I’m a White Anglo-Saxon Protestant male (raised Methodist\Presbyterian, ancestral ministers in both on both sides of the family) and proud of it.  These White Nazis do NOT represent me in any way, shape, or …

Fear Mongering, and Judicial Empathy

There are 2 excellent opinion columns in the Friday, 22 May, Denver Post newspaper. David Harsanyi writes about Fear: Our national pastime. Mike Rosen writes about Empathy and the Supreme Court. Democrats accuse Republicans of fear mongering and being the party of NO anytime Repubs disagree with Dems. But when Dems want to exercise haste …