Five Things that really tick me off about the Repubs now

1. Immigration policy, which seems to be to ignore the issue, no doubt to pander to  Hispanic voters.

2. Conservation. The Repubs should recapture the legacy of Teddy Roosevelt. I think they are missing a big pile of swing voters on this issue, especially in the Northeast and Northwest. But it's important anyway, regardless of vote calculations. Even if you write them off in national elections, they still have State parties that matter.

3. Balanced budget: There should have been a temporary war tax. Freedom isn't free.

4. Poor articulation of conservative principles - they have bully pulpits galore, which they could be using to convert the entire nation to reason, as FDR did with the Welfare State. There are lots of good folks, and younger folks, with their biases stuck in the mud of 1930s rhetoric, who might be curious about the Reagan vision of America - and the serious thinking behind it.

5. General political fearfulness; timidity in the face of liberal spin despite the wishes of the voters

Why is Condi Still Single?

A wise group of deep thinkers by poolside Sunday afternoon concluded that it is her STUPID HAIRCUT, maybe by the same guy who cuts John Edward's hair. Because she is otherwise perfect.

Barry Goldwater

Maine: Bull Moose has some observations of what Barry might be saying were he alive:

"In his later years, of course, Barry expressed his disgust and disagreement with the emergence of the religious right as a force. He colorfully collided with its leaders. For instance,

"When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye." "

EU Constitution is Dead (for the moment)

Northwest Harbor, Me: The Editor discourages weekend political postings in a worthy effort to reduce weekend agitation, but I just want to say that France was, for once, right - but for the wrong reason - in rejecting the EU Constitution. Their reason was that they did not want more capitalism sauvage imposed by Brussels.

But, on the the larger issue, they were correct: France didn't want to sacrifice its autonomy (even if their motives are in error and their understanding of economics is infantile). That is good. That represents an aspiration for freedom and a healthy distrust of distant government. Didn't they have an ugly revolution about that kind of thing? Watch the Netherlands vote "no" too - another weenie nation headed straight towards third-world status. Why have these nations no faith in the energy, productivity, responsibility, self-sufficiency, and ambition of their people? They have become nations of infants, voting for milk in baby-bottles. Pathetic.

Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard:

It's hard for Americans to appreciate just how out-of-touch the establishment (and it really is a single establishment) of Paris, Berlin, the Hague, and Brussels is. Its arrogance almost beyond belief. Former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the father of the 448-article constitution, early on in the campaign dismissed complaints about the document's opacity by assuring his countrymen, "The text is easily read and quite well phrased, which I can say all the more easily since I wrote it myself." As Ivan Rioufol of Le Figaro, writing in the Wall Street

Now, watch for calls for a re-match. Hey, EU, how about best of 3?

That's enough. I am off to the boat, and God Bless America and protect our brave men at arms.

Memorial Day and the Press

Northwest Harbor, Me: Memorial Day is about military sacrifice, something the press seems to have no respect for, although they are happy to report death and trouble if it makes the US look bad. So it's not really news that our self-anointed intelligentsia, especially the press and academics, look down their nose at the military as an institution, if not at soldiers themselves. Surely this is something that developed since WW2 - maybe it's a post-Vietnam syndrome, combined with a leftist desire to the see the US as less powerful and less virtuous than it is - and the corresponding tendency to idealize those who want to harm us and our interests.

John Leo in Town Hall reported on this subject this week, and it is a piece which only reinforces my feeling that a universal compulsory military service would do this country a lot of good. But that's a subject for another day.

John Leo: It’s official. Conservatives are losing their monopoly on complaints about media bias. In the wake of Newsweek’s bungled report that U.S. military interrogators “flushed a Qur’an down a toilet,” here is Terry Moran, ABC’s White House reporter, in an interview with radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt: “There is, I agree with you, a deep antimilitary bias in the media, one that begins from the premise that the military must be lying and that American projection of power around the world must be wrong.” Moran thinks it’s a hangover from Vietnam. Sure, but the culture of the newsroom is a factor, too. In all my years in journalism, I don’t think I have met more than one or two reporters who have ever served in the military or who even had a friend in the armed forces. Most media hiring today is from universities where a military career is regarded as bizarre and almost any exercise of American power is considered wrongheaded or evil.

Read entire piece here.

Leaving the Left

A fascinating piece from Thompson, with plenty of honesty:

LEAVING THE LEFT
Out of the corner of my eye I watched what was coming for more than three decades, yet refused to truly see

Dem Party on the Skids, from a Liberal in Recovery

I am past gloating about the success of the conservative movement, and I am not worried about the effects of the Dems being a long-term minority party. After all, the Repubs were in the wilderness for over 40 years, and during much of that time, a TV political debate consisted of two Dems with different views.

Their problem, as I have pontificated here before, is that they have painted themselves into a Left-flavored, anti-military, morally-relativistic, elitist, anti-religion, anti-tradition, big govt, and reactionary corner, a corner from which vantage point the past seems large, and the future small. And the Lefty flavoring has become so pronounced that their candidates are reluctant to voice their vision openly, because it's a losing vision nationally. They are out in the ozone, breathing very thin air.

That secret vision, as best I can tell, is to shape the US into something like France, or Sweden, or the old Soviet Union - or something like that. That's fairly crazy. However, their seeming delight in undermining traditional institutions and cultural icons is what seems to tick people off the most - no respect for the cultural, religious and historical foundations of the country that have served us so well, with the countless blessings that make us the role model and desired destination of the world, whether they admit it or not.

No doubt a way will be found for the Dems to dump this antiquated Marxist baggage over time and to regain some power. There is no doubt that powerlessness does not become them. Sooner or later, they will get on the right side of history - or fake it. Or, more likely, the Repubs will blow it.

This is especially relevant at a time when those nations which took the left fork in the road are scrambling desperately to change direction to get back on the highway to freedom from stifling, overbearingly maternalistic governments "that know what is best for us" - the very thing we had a revolution to get rid of. Who knows, maybe they did know best, but that was not the point. Americans would rather make their own mistakes than forfeit their power to politicans - a class of humans for whom they have little respect.

Patrick Hynes has written a piece called The Nostalgia Party which I think captures the pickle the Dems find themselves in (from corner to pickle - yes, I see it - this isn't literature). He reviews an American Prospect symposium called "Tax and Spend! The Case for Big Government," and provides a series of excerpts from presenters, for example: 

Jack P. Shonkoff insists an expansive federal government is necessary to raising healthy kids.

Since when are families obsolete?

Robert Kuttner proposes a bizarro "Ownership Society" in which the government owns almost everything.

Russia and China already tried that. It wasn't pretty.

And Paul Starr opines that government rationed freedom is the only means by which to obtain true liberty.

Note that last line. Scarey. Where have we heard that kind of double-think before? This is not a joke, folks. From all of this, you might imagine that Liberals believe that the country is in deep trouble, if not in an emergency, rather than being the wealthiest, most powerful, most charitable, most Christian and most free country in the world - with the highest social mobility too. Hynes concludes:

The modern liberal movement, as characterized by the American Prospect's big government symposium, has devolved into a reactionary and unimaginative faction pining for the glory days of the early and mid 20^th Century when government expansion was all the rage and "the future" was happening now in the old Soviet Union.

But on top of recommending pessimistic ideas, there is considerable evidence the dreamy left is also just plain wrong. Consider America's forty-year-and-counting war on poverty. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans below 125% of the poverty line was 21.3% when Lyndon Johnson's Great Society war began in 1966. It remained nearly that high until 1983, when Ronald Reagan's tax cuts kicked in. From then through 1989, poverty fell to 17.3%. It actually spiked again during the Bush (41) and Clinton presidencies, but it is once again receding during the Bush (43) presidency, where it currently stands at 16.9%. In these data, we hear echoes of Ronald Reagan asking "why would we ever want to go back?"

Of course. Wise observers knew it at the time - Lyndon Johnson's "War on Poverty" was a vote-buying scam perpetrated on a generous and naive nation, and nothing more. The goal of eliminating poverty remains a good one - but how? Anyway, read the whole thing at TechCentral.

Big Green

Let us fervently hope that the removal of the fascistic politically-correct speech codes at Dartmouth heralds a shift towards sanity in those hallowed halls of Hanover. I'd support codes of gentlemanly and gentle-lady-like behavior, but not political speech content.

The Fart Tax

Virtuous New Zealand is doing its part to reduce greenhouse gasses - by introducing another tax on fuel, of course. I can see how that adds to government revenues, and I can see how it makes some feel good ("You have to try something"), but I'm damned if I can see how it accomplishes anything else.

Governments love stuff like that.

The story from Right Thinking reminds us of that infamous Fart Tax, which was finally rejected by New Zealand. Turns out half of their greenhouse emissions come from cattle passing gas. It was never mentioned what percent come from human gas, but there aren't many humans in New Zealand, which is why it's such a lovely country.

Anyway, New Zealand, I guess I can say this: "You care." That's really really nice.

And there's an interesting twist in Oregon, another "We Care" place, which pushed hybrid autos hard and successfully, but now finds their gas tax income dwindling, so they're coming up with a plan to replace the gas tax - with a tax on mileage! So much for supporting hybrids. So much for govt. wisdom. Why doesn't the Oregon legislature just propose a fart tax on people? It might help solve the elevator atmosphere crisis.

The Fawlty Towers of Academe: Analyzing Faculty Unhappiness

Every bright, curious young person has at least once considered a teaching career. Even I did, as an undergraduate. How could one not, spending all of those years surrounded by teachers? It is one of the few careers with which a kid has close experience.

Plus it is truly a noble profession, with no heavy lifting, especially at the college level.

So why are faculty always griping? Joseph Epstein tries to get to the bottom of this question via his review of Showaler's new book, Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and its Discontents.

My sense is that his essay, which uses the academic novel as a jumping-off point, pertains mainly to faculty in the Humanities if not in Departments of English in particular - a group which, from the point of view of "consumers," seems to have lost its way, forgotten its mission, and sacrificed its prestige.

Eptein notes the dream of the academic life:

"Universities attract people who are good at school. Being good at school takes a real enough but very small talent. As the philosopher Robert Nozick once pointed out, all those A's earned through their young lives encourage such people to persist in school: to stick around, get more A's and more degrees, sign on for teaching jobs. When young, the life ahead seems glorious. They imagine themselves inspiring the young, writing important books, living out their days in cultivated leisure."

But such an idealized vision can never be realized, of course, and then a little envy drops in:

"But something, inevitably, goes awry, something disagreeable turns up in the punch bowl. Usually by the time they turn 40, they discover the students aren't sufficiently appreciative; the books don't get written; the teaching begins to feel repetitive; the collegiality is seldom anywhere near what one hoped for it; there isn't any good use for the leisure. Meanwhile, people who got lots of B's in school seem to be driving around in Mercedes, buying million-dollar apartments, enjoying freedom and prosperity in a manner that strikes the former good students, now professors, as not only unseemly but of a kind a just society surely would never permit."

And, the final blow - the realization of the triviality of one's "research":

"Now that politics has trumped literature in English departments the situation is even worse. Beset by political correctness, self-imposed diversity, without leadership from above, university teachers, at least on the humanities and social-science sides, knowing the work they produce couldn't be of the least possible interest to anyone but the hacks of the MLA and similar academic organizations, have more reason than ever to be unhappy."

Epstein cheerfully concludes:

"And so let us leave them, overpaid and underworked, surly with alienation and unable to find any way out of the sweet racket into which they once so ardently longed to get."

Read entire.

Counting Coup Before the Battle for the Court

"Here comes the blind commissioner, they've got him in a trance,
one hand is tied to the tight-rope walker, the other is in his pants."

Yes, it's about Desolation Row.

Indian braves, in inter-tribal warfare, found glory in counting coup – demonstrating that they could kill, without killing. Like Mountain Sheep butting heads. But when it came down to protecting their buffalo land, things got bloody quick.

Since the election, we have seen the Dems probing, posturing, testing, lining up their moderate Repubs, and counting coup, in preparation for the big war for which they are girding themselves – the battle for at least two seats on the Supreme Court. Nothing in DC can be viewed outside of that context.

And never underestimate the destructive impulses of the weak and the small.

The Condi hearings were part of it. The Bolton thing is another. I have no doubt that Mr. Bolton is a hard-ass, and pro-American. Two strong points in his favor. But the Bolton thing isn’t about Bolton – it’s about demonstrating the power to deny Bush his appointees. Everyone knows the UN is a Sacred Joke - that ain't news.

And everyone in DC knows full well that Frist was playing a game of poker with his nuclear option - it was obvious. It was always meant to be an empty threat and a bluff, and he got called on his bluff. Suddenly, now, he either has to go forward or go backwards. Bad poker player – doctors always are. They have a native tendency for trust which doesn't work in DC, even when the trusting try to be sneaky. Decent folks can't pull it off. He had never intended to go through with it – it would have been a disaster in the Senate. He will now try to quietly retreat while appearing as if he isn't, but he got hurt because he was a schlemiel. He tried to be crafty, but he got out-maneuvered by the big boys like Chuckie Shumer, with Hillary in the wings, doing the hard math and the mafioso work: two Real Greasy Men with sharp elbows and minimal conscience who know the difference between a schlemiel and a schlemozle.

It's a game for this kind of people, I am sorry to say. It is no longer a sport for well-bred gentlemen who respect their opponents with good cheer and and sporting manners - not that it ever was. Honest folk need not apply: "I'm a politician, meaning I'm a cheat and a liar. When I'm not kissing babies, I'm stealing their lollipops." (Hunt for Red October)

 But the Repubs – not Frist - could win the long game by losing the hand, and I suspect that is part of the calculus. Filibustering judicial nominees is a double-edged sword, or a double-edged nuclear weapon. Now that it has become “acceptable” for routine use, it will be used much more in the future by Repubs – and they may need it in time – maybe sooner than Repubs want to imagine. The gamble was hedged in that way. Karl Rove ain’t stupid and wouldn’t endorse an unhedged bet. But Frist gets to be the shmuck in the game, and he should suffer because of the impaired judgement in going public by showing a very weak hand of cards.

For the time being, the Dems have won the skirmish by playing rope-a-dope with Frist in the classic Cassius Clay manner. They succeeded in roping a dope and have made the super-majority requirement acceptable for judicial nominees, and for who-knows what else. Maybe everything. Frist blew it big-time, thinking he was clever. Pride goeth before a fall.

 
But these things are all minor skirmishes as the main battle looms on the horizon. Thanks to poor and arrogant calculations, the Repubs enter the battlefield weakened. There will be blood on the saddle and blood running on the prairie. It’s a damn shame and it didn’t have to be this way. We will have open warfare, with too much at stake, and tainted by the desperation of the resentful, weak but emboldened Leftys that remain. All because of pure stupidity and arrogance. At least this is what it looks like to me now. I hope I'm wrong, and there's still a little time for the bluff to work...

You couldn’t run a business this way.

Anti-Americanism

Mahoney reviews Revel's Anti-Americanism:

Revel "knows the United States quite well and has written about it with curiosity and sympathy since the publication of his international bestseller Without Marx or Jesus in 1970. In that work, he put forward the audacious claim that the United States was the world's only truly revolutionary society, a veritable laboratory for social initiatives and experiments in living."

 Revel seems to have a handle on something real:

"Anti-Americanism is a ubiquitous phenomenon, the closest thing in the contemporary world to a secular religion uniting intellectuals and demi-intellectuals across national boundaries and cultural frontiers. It is less a systematic ideology than a frame of mind, nurtured by deep-seated resentments against liberal capitalism and by quasi-nihilistic despair at Marxism's and other revolutionary ideologies' failure to redeem the human condition. In his timely dissection of the anti-American vulgate, the French political observer Jean-François Revel establishes the powerful continuities between the old "totalitarian temptation"—European and Third World intellectuals' attraction to Communism—and today's crude anti-Americanism, which does so much to distort representations of American society and U.S. foreign policy. In Revel's presentation, anti-Americanism is the totalitarian temptation deprived of any positive or coherent alternative to the established liberal order. It is, in important respects, a survival of the age of ideology and has inherited many of its predecessors' pathological traits."

Read entire here.

Illegal Immigration, etc.

Contrary to popular impression, not all businessmen enjoy illegal immigration. From my past posts, you will gather that I do not feel that "illegal" is OK. The Repubs and the Dems are weenies on the subject, and they get no respect from me. Nor do any politicians. They are tools - hope they are our tools.  I would write another blog rant, but VDH talks better than I can write, and he doesn't rant.  A fine interview with VDH by Olasky:

"With perhaps as many as 20 million illegal aliens from Mexico, and the immigration laws in shreds, we are reaching a state of crisis. In a multiracial society such as our own, are we to tell the Filipino, the Sikh, the Korean, or the Haitian, "Stand in line, come legally, wait your turn—unless you come across the Mexican border and break the law in doing so." So, we need to return to what is known to work: measured and legal immigration, strict enforcement of our existing laws, stiff employer sanctions, an end to bilingual documents and interpreters, and ethnic chauvinism, English immersion—in other words, an end to the disastrous salad bowl and a return to the successful melting pot."

And, as a bonus, VDH throws in this jewel of an ad lib paragraph:

"We have given our entire souls to the god Reason, and left little else to the mystery and inexplicable of the world of faith. By believing that money and education alone can remake man, we of this therapeutic age forgot that his nature is largely fixed and hence predictable—and thus saved through law, family, religion, and community that ameliorate and tame his innate savagery. In our arrogance, we think a millionaire bin Laden or an educated Mohammed Atta is simply misguided, or has legitimate grievances, or is in need of aid and understanding, rather than proud, bullying, full of envy—and, yes, evil—and thus must be defeated rather than understood if we are going to save the innocent from their murderous instincts."

Read entire interview here.

The Asian Century

The US has gotten comfortable dominating the world economically and, more or less, militarily. Except for the usual anti-American moaners and groaners. Its' been a good deal for the world, but in our wealth and security we have become maybe too-comfortable. Even though we have done some foolish things, I doubt any nation in the history of the world can match our good intentions or our good deeds. And now our supposed "ally," Europe, is on a self-destruct mission.

But now with China waking up - thanks to global capitalism - and with India on a tech roll - thanks to global capitalism, there is no doubt that a change is coming. It doesn't have to be a bad thing, but Jim Pinkerton is worried (not that this train can be stopped):

"Thus the three wheels: First, China gets closer to India, as the two nations seek a New Asian Order. Second, China grows more hostile to the United States and Japan. Third, China bolsters nuke-crazy North Korea.

Those are three fuses burning across the Pacific, whether we like it or not - whether we know it or not."

Read his piece here.

Illegal Immigration

Illegal means illegal. The new Minutemen are doing what 90% of Americans would want to do. I've talked myself hoarse on this subject. Disgusted with both Clinton and Bush Admins. on this issue - weenies. Got nothing further to say. Read Confederate Yankee here.

Social Security, FDR, GW, etc.

Truth is, only I really know how FDR feels about Social Security reform, because I've been channeling FDR ever since Bush proposed reform - don't laugh - and FDR has been following the issue closely. And he channels Maggie's Farm daily, I'm pleased to report. Anyway, here are some of the things he has communicated to me:

"I was proud of Social Security, but that was two or three generations ago. Times change, and solutions change. Experiment, and make it better. That's what I always tried to do with things."

"That young pup GW sure has some balls to him. I like him. A warrior with a heart."

"Any legislation is just a first draft. You see how it works in reality and then you adjust to reality. The real purpose was just to keep the elderly from dying in the gutter, not to advance socialism. That goal is my legacy, not how it's achieved. Economics was never my forte anyway."

"Don't listen to my relatives. They want me embalmed - well, I am embalmed - I mean they want my legislation embalmed. As a monument to their Gramps or great-Gramps or whatever. Ridiculous. Hell, look at the tricks I played with the courts - nothing is permanent as I see it. Even the Constitution."

"If you could channel me a double dry Beefeater martini, up, with two olives, I would welcome it very much right now. It's cocktail hour."

I missed a very good review piece by John Fund when it came out a few weeks ago, at the the time of the FDR flap - the Libs went berserko because conservatives quoted FDR on Social Security, but Mr. Fund doesn't have the channel to FDR that I have:

"One good spinoff from the debate over President Bush's Social Security reform is that everyone is finally discussing the program's "solvency." It's about time. Countless people still think there is a "trust fund" with real assets in it that is being held for them until they're old enough to collect retirement payments. It's time they learn the truth. As Harvard economist Martin Feldstein has noted, the system's solvency "is based on a complex accounting sham so duplicitous that it is hard to believe."  Click here: Progress for America

The New! Improved! Democratic Party

Maggie's has already covered Frank's What's the Matter with Those Moron Idiot Rednecks in Kansas, and now we address Lakoff's Don't Think of An Elephant. I swear to God - Please, Dems, study these profound, history-changing books deeply!...I mean these condescending, simplistic, elitist, self-congratulating books. 

Lakoff actually presents old ideas. His advice is for Dems to change the words they use - change nothing of substance. It's standard marketing advice. But the Clintons and Tony Blair wrote the book on that subject years ago. It's about faking out the voter while you press your agenda....well, more so for Clinton than for Blair, who doesn't make us vomit. And the agenda, as I see it, is to make so many folks dependent on the govt. that they'll be re-elected forever, thus getting themselves on the dole too so they don't have to contend with a real demanding job. And can strut around DC picking up underage chicks while the wife sits home in the boonies. Pathetic.

Of course, the problem is that only about 48% max of the voters want to buy the soft socialist soap the Dems are selling. And those voters are essentially all in major urban areas, when you look at that county Red/Blue map. Not many of them in real America unless they're on the dole, which includes the govt. payroll. So it is true that if you want to sell more people this soap, changing the packaging is the place to start - assuming voters are the morons they think they are. From Cooper's interesting review in The Atlantic:

"In his best-selling manual of progressive political advice, Don't Think of an Elephant!, Lakoff asserts that political consciousness, and therefore voter choice, is determined by deeply wired mental structures -- "frames" -- that reflect more-general views and values. "The frames," Lakoff writes, "are in the synapses of our brains, physically present in the form of neural circuitry." Notwithstanding this neuroscientific hooey, Lakoff suggests that reframing American politics according to liberal values -- in essence rewiring our collective circuitry -- is but a matter of simple wordplay. When conservatives invoke "strong defense," liberals, Lakoff says, must reframe the concept by referring to a "stronger America." Instead of "free markets," liberals should speak of "broad prosperity." Likewise, "smaller government" must be recast as "effective government," and "family values" as "mutual responsibility." Those greedy "trial lawyers" excoriated by the right should be reframed and praised as brave and selfless "public-protection attorneys." And perhaps most important, when conservatives start promoting more Bushian "tax relief," liberals should respond by defending taxes as "membership fees" or "investments" in America."

Read entire: Click here: Powell's Books - Review-a-Day - Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate (A Progressive G

The Euristan Union

The News Junkie made a good point today when he wondered why any nation would voluntarily join an Empire and sacrifice their autonomy and uniqueness and freedom. Aren't those things more valuable than anything that could be gained? The Big Trunk has an absurd but real example about the EU wanting to change place names in Scotland: Click here: Power Line: April 2005 Archives

More Adventure Travel

Anything is better than Disneyworld: Space Tourism. Cheap thrills: 
Check out http://www.travelwirenews.com/cgi-script/csArticles/articles/000034

Race for the Bottom at the NYT

OK, who will win - Dowd or Krugman? You were quite right, Opie, to point out Krugman's apparent break from reality today. Hindrocket does a heck of a job on him - wonder if he'll show up at work tomorrow.

"We're not the first to this party, but, hey, it's never too late to pile on Paul Krugman. Rightwing Nuthouse says that Krugman's latest column in the New York Times is evidence that he has "gone stark, raving mad." I won't go that far; let's just say that Krugman has abandoned any claim to be taken seriously."  Click here: Power Line: March 2005 Archives I will renew my subscription to the NYT when they hire either Steyn or Hindrocket.

Roger Scruton on Conservatism

A worthwhile reprise of a very wise piece, a past "Best Essay" candidate:

"I was brought up at a time when half the English people voted Conservative at national elections and almost all English intellectuals regarded the term “conservative” as a term of abuse. To be a conservative, I was told, was to be on the side of age against youth, the past against the future, authority against innovation, the “structures” against spontaneity and life. It was enough to understand this, to recognize that one had no choice, as a free-thinking intellectual, save to reject conservatism. The choice remaining was between reform and revolution. Do we improve society bit by bit, or do we rub it out and start again? On the whole my contemporaries favored the second option, and it was when witnessing what this meant, in May 1968 in Paris, that I discovered my vocation."

Read entire: Click here: Why I became a conservative by Roger Scruton

College Faculty Leftists

Hey Howard Kurtz - do you call this news?  "College faculties, long assumed to be a liberal bastion, lean further to the left than even the most conspiratorial conservatives might have imagined, a new study says."

Why? Either they are much smarter than the rest of us, or it's because they went to school in the 60s, got tenured academic jobs, never dealt with the adult world, and never grew up.

Wine and Cancer

As a red wine afficionado, I am happy to provide this cheery news to the "Wine Drinking Community."  Cheers!  Click here: BIO.COM: Biotechnology Pharmaceutical Therapeutics, Vaccines, Diagnostics, Discovery - Biotech, Pharma, Biomedical