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REPUBLIC TO OLIGARCHY: A History of America |
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Written by Jonathan Emord
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787,
Benjamin Franklin, then 81, had gained a reputation for shrewd realism.
The handiwork of the Continental Congress impressed him, but he believed it
imperfect; he knew it was better than any other plan for government on earth
but he feared the plan might not survive.
As he left the Convention for the last time, a group of
anxious citizens asked him what kind of government the delegates had
created. The deliberations were secret and, so, the curiosity of
Philadelphians had reached a fever pitch. Responding to the inquiry, Dr.
Franklin replied, "a republic, if you can keep it."
Sadly, 220 years later, we have lost it.
Today our nation is largely run by the unelected heads of
the federal independent regulatory commissions. Those heads are the most
powerful political leaders in the United States, more powerful than the
President, any member of Congress, and any federal judge.
Their will is very much the law. In their hands
rest legislative, executive, and judicial powers which they wield daily without
having to answer to anyone for the consequences. They rule as oligarchs. A simple legal fix could put an end to their unconstitutional rule.
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HANGING UP ON ALGORE |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
To say the earth is as warm as its ever been since the
invention of the thermometer isn't as scary as alarmists think. The
mercury thermometer was invented by Gabriel Fahrenheit in 1714. That was in the
middle of the Little Ice Age (AD 1350-1900). Of course temperatures are warmer
now than they were then.
Dr. Bob Carter, a paleoclimate researcher at James Cook
University in Australia, notes that for most of the last six million years, average
global temperatures were as much as five degrees Celsius warmer than they are
today.
As each new piece of evidence weakens their argument, global
warming alarmists try to shut off debate.
They claim a consensus which does not exist. The
National Registry of Environmental Professionals took a survey last November,
which indicated two thirds of its members think global warming is a serious
problem. That means a third do not. So much for consensus.
Skeptics are, global warming alarmists say, a "fringe"
who are paid by CO2-spewing corporations to express doubt. But numbered
among the skeptics are some of the world's most renowned climatologists, such
as Richard Lindzen of MIT and Patrick Michaels of the University of
Virginia. All have better credentials than does the divinity school
dropout who invented the Internet and from whom alarmists take their cues.
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HILLARY IN DANGER |
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Written by Tony Blankley
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
The 2008 Democrat presidential primary season has gotten off
to a good start -- for the Republicans.
As the Democrat Party presidential aspirants finished their
speeches last week to the party's winter meeting, the early big political fact
is the dangerous populist and anti-war pull that the candidates feel. This is
particularly dangerous for Sen. Hillary Clinton as she ratchets-up, almost
weekly, her anti-war Iraqi rhetoric and policy.
Only Jimmy Carter after the Watergate scandal and her
husband after the fall of the Soviet Union got a pass from the American
electorate on their national-security shortcomings. Hillary won't be so lucky.
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HEDGED IN BY BUREAUCRATS |
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Written by Richard Rahn
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
What is a "hedge fund"?
If you have trouble answering the question, you are not alone, because the term is commonly used to describe many types of pooled investments that may have little in common with each other.
Yet despite the lack of agreement about what exactly are hedge funds, a host of politicians, commentators and financial regulators now advocate more regulation of them. I am sure you are just so surprised.
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DON’T GET MAD, GET EFFECTIVE |
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Written by Dr. Joel Wade
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
One of the errors of our time is assuming that the
civilization we have built is a given. We start with the idea that we can rely
on our present structure of democracy and freedom, and then we take aim at
anything that we don't like in that structure.
On the Left of course, we are familiar with the whole hate
America, anti-war, anti-capitalism, anti-establishment, anti-fill-in-the-blank
mumbo jumbo. Let's not worry about
them here.
On the Right, though, we can sometimes be so quick to attack
any leader or policy that does not fit perfectly in our view of how America
should be, without giving any benefit of the doubt to the people concerned.
What does this have to do with your happiness? Because you
may be losing sleep, getting angry and annoyed, and feeling generally more
grumpy than you need to about things you needn't, while in the process
undermining your effectiveness in building and improving our civilization.
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THE BEST DEAR ABBY LETTER |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 09 February 2007 |
This has recently been judged the best letter/response in
the history of the "Dear Abby" column.
Dear Abby,
My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning, and,
when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows that he
cheats on me. It is so humiliating. Also, since he lost his job six years ago,
he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars,
cruise and pal around with his buddies while I have to work to pay the
bills.
Since our daughter went away to college he doesn't even pretend to like me and
hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?
Clueless
Abby's answer:
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THE FRAGILITY OF ISLAMOFASCISM |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
[This is the text of a speech I am giving to the Council for National Policy at Amelia Island, Florida, Friday, February 2.]
It has been my good fortune to experience a great deal of the world and get to know people from close to 200 countries. There is a common humanity shared by most folks around the globe. The fact that there has never been a war between two genuine democracies clearly shows that most people prefer peace to war, and simply want a decent life for their families and children.
Yet as we all know, history is full of examples of people going berserk, falling victim to some frenzied hysteria. It can be a frenzy of paranoia, such as the lunacy we are currently experiencing over "global warming." It can be a frenzy of greed, like the dotcom bubble or the Tulip Craze.
The worst are frenzies of criminal insanity, like the Gulag Communism of the Soviet Union, the National Socialism of Hitler's Germany, or the barbaric imperialism of Tojo's Japan.
An entire people like the Germans or Japanese can go criminally, murderously nuts. Such mass criminality has to be ended by whatever means necessary. But once the frenzy is over, the people crazed by it can become normal human beings again.
Just such a mass criminal insanity has today taken over the minds of a substantial fraction of the world's Moslems. Today, we're going to talk about how to put an end to it.
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A COMMUNITY OF VALUES |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 02 February 2007 |
Wow. That's my and
everybody else's reaction to our first To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas
last weekend (1/26-28). The abundantly
clear lesson we learned was: members of
To The Point really get along with each other!
At every get together, I was so hesitant to begin speaking
as I didn't want to interrupt folks who were having such an obvious good time
together. Then again, I had such
a good time.
Another thing I learned is that TTPers are a curious
bunch. I can't begin to remember all
the topics we discussed. Countries all
over the world. The Washington
circus. How politicians exemplify a
Hyper-Peter Principle.
The Peter Principle, that people are promoted to their level
of incompetence, applies to companies.
Politicians (and bureaucrats in general) shoot way beyond it, into
hyper-incompetence. The just-elected
governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons, is a perfect example. He is an absolute fool, and is wife Dawn is
an even greater ditz. Sad to say, he's
a Republican.
Yet a neighbor Democrat governor, Bill Richardson, is...
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STILL HOPE FOR EUROPE |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Friday, 02 February 2007 |
For those doom-and-gloom pessimists convinced of the
inevitability of the Islamization of Europe, here's a wonderfully cheery news
bulletin: Moslem imams are fleeing
Holland in droves.
Of course, the BBC reports this as proof of Dutch
Islamophobia. The tuth is that the
Dutch are finally waking up to the threat of Islamofascism in their midst. There are over one million Moslems in
Holland now, and in cities like Rotterdam, well over a third of the children
are Moslem.
Now, if the Dutch could just get regular Moslem immigrants
to follow their imams out of the country...
Yet there is far better news in France. The fate of Europe will be decided there in
the presidential election on April 22, with a runoff if necessary on May
6. The "Sego-Sarko" race is the most
important political event in the world for 2007.
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TURKMENISTAN’S NUKES AND IRAN’S MESSIAH |
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Written by Dagny D'Anconia
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
The president of Turkmenistan was quite a
character. Saparmurat Niyazov was in
many ways the Kim Jong Il of Central Asia.
His image was everywhere - statues and murals extolled his wisdom and
courage. Brutal, violent and cruel, he
ran a tight Stalinist state. Like Kim
Jong Il, he developed a megalomaniacal presidency for life and a entrenched
personality cult.
After the Soviet collapse he renamed himself Serdar
Turkmenbashi which means "Great Leader of all Turkmen". He renamed the month of January (Yanwar)
after himself and the month of April (Aprel) after his mother,
Gurbansoltan.
Turkmenbashi supposedly died of a "heart
attack" on Dec. 21st. The very next day, Dec. 22, Iran's Ahmadinejad made
a major speech saying "Iran is now a nuclear power". It was out of the blue and unexpected at the
time. Nuclear authorities were focusing
on the Iranian centrifuges, and estimating the day of reckoning with a "nuclear
power" as years away.
Then Iranian government radio began a series of
broadcasts preparing people for the apocalyptic return of the Mahdi, the Shia
Messiah.
Let's connect these dots.
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THE SUICIDE OF SHARIA |
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Written by Alex Alexiev
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
Some two years ago Saudi clerics issued fatwas
forbidding Moslems to play soccer unless its rules were replaced by
"Islamic rules," or it was used as physical training for jihad. To
the extent that anybody noticed that in the West, they were promptly dismissed
as the inconsequential ravings of misguided fanatics.
This is not likely to be the fate of recent promises by
British chancellor and prime minister-in-waiting, Gordon Brown, to make Britain
"a key hub for facilitating Islamic finance" and to turn London into
"a major enabling and structuring center for global Islamic finance."
Yet, completely different as these two cases appear to
be at first blush, they are both part of a concerted effort by radical
Islamists to make the rest of us accept their reactionary worldview as
legitimate in the name of multiculturalism and diversity.
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PARIAH JOHN: TRAITOR IN VIETNAM, NOW TRAITOR IN IRAQ |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
On January 20, Iranian agents kidnapped five US soldiers in
Karbala, Iraq. They killed one
immediately. The bodies of the four other Americans were found later.
President Bush's subsequent decision to permit U.S. troops
to kill Iranians who are trying to kill them came shortly after the Karbala
attack, which in earlier times would have been recognized by one and all for
the act of war that it was.
But as evidence mounted over the weekend of Iranian
involvement in the terror in Iraq, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, was at the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, describing his country as an
"international pariah" for fighting it.
Sen. Kerry followed to the podium former Iranian president
Mohammed Khatami, whose speech he praised. Sen. Kerry's remarks were
front page news in Iranian newspapers.
In the "War Crimes" museum in Ho Chi Minh City
(Saigon), there is a photo of Sen. Kerry greeting the general secretary of the
Vietnamese Communist party. Perhaps Sen. Kerry is angling for similar
recognition in Tehran.
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GLO-BULL WARMING |
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Written by Jack Kelly
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
For the last two weeks the weather in Pittsburgh has been
typical for January -- it's snowed almost every day. And for the first
time this winter I've heard complaints about the weather at work. I heard
none during our unseasonably warm December.
I note this to put in perspective the latest scare report on
global warming from the United Nations: Hypothetical piled upon
hypothetical, based on computer models which cannot duplicate the actual
climate of the present or the recent past.
Alarmists attribute warming to rising levels of carbon
dioxide in the atmosphere. But CO2 accounts for only about 0.03 percent
of the earth's atmosphere, and less than 10 percent of the greenhouse
effect. Only about 14 percent of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
comes from burning fossil fuels.
That means all of Algore's hysteria, all the
economy-destroying restrictions of the Kyoto Treaty, are about stopping carbon
emissions responsible for 1.4% of the greenhouse effect.
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ACT LIKE AN EXTRAVERT EVEN IF YOU’RE NOT |
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Written by Dr. Joel Wade
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Thursday, 01 February 2007 |
People who are extraverts, people who are more sociable, who
like to be out, talk, and interact with
other people, and who gladly put themselves out into public situations - tend
to be happier than people who are not.
That's great for those who, by temperament, happen to be
extroverts. But what if you're not one of those people?
You can still improve your overall happiness by doing extraverted things.
You don't have to be naturally outgoing to get the benefits
of being an extravert. As I say often in these columns, you get good at what
you practice, so make sure that what you practice is what you want to get good
at.
Here are a few suggestions:
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CONSERVATIVE COMEDY CENTRAL |
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Written by To The Point News
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Friday, 02 February 2007 |
A former Reagan aide and producer of FahrenHYPE 9/11 has created a comedy
entertainment website just for young conservatives. You have to
log in for access, but it's free. Have fun!
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