The Problem Continues…
The problem still hasn’t been solved. Some time a go, I wrote a piece about President Obama’s biggest concern. At least, it should be his biggest concern, because if this particular issue is not addressed, it will go well for Republicans in November, and...Medicinal Marijuana
In my years as a youngster I never thought that we would be seriously discussing whether Marijuana should be considered either for medicinal or recreational usage. And as a conservative, I would have never thought that we would need to spend the time debating the pros and cons without a lot of easy standard lines: "It's a Gateway Drug", "Kills Brain Cells", "Highly Addictive".
But here we are, and frankly, I'm not prepared to just discard the discussion as unimportant or too obvious to spend time on. That would be both a disservice and inconsistent with my belief that positions on policy should be reviewed and when challenged, they should be openly and honestly discussed.
I'm not a doctor, nor have I had the time to study this at such a level of depth as to call myself an "expert" on the topic. But I have discussed this with doctors I know, and I've looked at some of the information currently available (here, here, here and here). I've also been around friends that were regular users of Marijuana, and I even took one deep breath of the stuff (from a pipe) when I was younger. Yes, I inhaled. Didn't like it. And I was a tobacco smoker at the time.
Most of us here in the Midwest tend to just laugh at California for legalizing Marijuana for medicinal use. We could have more or less predicted that dispensaries would become dealers for all who wanted, not just those that actually needed it. And as the debate is building here in Iowa [...]
The President’s Employment Problem
President Obama has a huge problem: jobs. As in, lack of them. As in, not creating any. He promised them on the campaign trail, and he promised them as part of the $1.2 trillion stimulus package he signed a year ago.
After one year in office, with a huge majority in Congress, he has accomplished remarkably little, which is a relief to a Conservative. He has spent an inordinate amout of time, resources and energy wrangling over socialized medicine and cap and trade, and the unemployment remains stubbornly high.
Tomorrow, employment data will be released for January. Weekly initial jobless claims for unemployment insurance has been running about 470,000, and this week the number hit 480,000. The employment sector will not grow until initial jobless claims fall below 400,000. We're still a long way off.
There are two factors in play. The President has been jawboning big business for the last three years, while on the campaign trail and since his inauguration. Business will not hire workers without some stable signs of an increase in aggregate demand, and as long as this administration sends a [...]
Obama’s State Of The Union Promise: Can He Cut Programs?
As we end the President's first year in office, we still struggle with folks on the left complaining bitterly that those of us who share a conservative ilk are out to see Obama fail. Never mind the fact that all I seem to hear during a Republican administration is a cacophony of angry vitriol, outright lies and attempts by Congress to undermine the critical work of the President, and I'll accept the fact that there are many on the right who see nothing but red when they discuss the current resident of the White House. But my goal is strictly to see America -- Americans -- be successful, and that means that I want to see the President be successful as well.
But the President’s speech tonight leaves me wondering. There’s no doubt it brought a sense of euphoria to those in need, to those who continue to promote a liberal agenda. The beginning and end of the speech brought a broad stroke of hope and confidence in who we are as a nation, as any good presidential speech should.
He made some good proposals. Some of which will make Congress uncomfortable to consider. Some of which will be hard to execute. Earmark transparency. Budget freezes. Cutting programs.
He made some popular proposals. Jobs programs. Small Business Lending programs and tax credits. Tax credits on capital investments. Bank investment reforms. Additional taxation of large banks.
And he continued to press for Health Care Reform that Americans don’t want.
I will likely disagree with much of the spending [...]
2010 US State Of The Union Preview
| Tonight |
| Art will be a featured guest at the Des Moines Register's web site tonight during the President's speech in an online chat. You can join us at this link starting at 7:45 PM. |
Health Care
Look for President Obama to sound confident and yet cautious on this topic. He may well fire barbs at the Republicans in Congress, but the fact is that House and Senate Democrats had the ability to make this happen months ago if they had the intestinal fortitude to put personal pride, personal gain and "pet ideas" aside and come to a consensus on what most of us would agree is a critical issue in America. But the President won't point any of that out.The Economy
There will be more demands to poor money into the hands of businesses and citizens... unfortunately it will likely be more of the same non-stimulating "stimulus" money, feeding [...]Haiti Vs New Orleans
From the Palm 700P….
Hey Glenn:
London Times: Haiti earthquake: a few more rescues, but aid still slow.“Nobody can go anywhere without security in the city. No aid workers can go anywhere without taking risks with security. That adds to the difficulty of delivering the aid because you not only have to have transport – which is rare – you also have to have some sort of security with you, or you are taking a risk. People are getting angry, people are getting hungry and thirsty.†This is sounding kind of familiar.
As I mentioned before, disaster relief isn’t like ordering a pizza. It’s hard to get aid into a place where the infrastructure has been wrecked and ordinary social order broken down. I’m seeing some people start to go after Obama on this in an obvious echo of the Katrina-based criticism of Bush. I understand the appeal of payback, but I don’t see any evidence that Obama has blown it here; this stuff is just hard. Of course, the press won’t go after him the way they went after Bush, but that’s a given.
Thing is, that’s exactly the point. I said to David in [...]
Hello 2010!
Goodbye 2009! Hello 2010!
Nearly everyone I talk to expresses relief at the end of 2009. It would be a good year to forget, that is, if we didn't have to deal with the consequences of decisions and actions that will reverberate throughout the rest of our lives.
But it's a new year now, so no doom and gloom. I'll leave that to our President, and let me point out that he's good at it! I'm not one to make resolutions, but there are several that I've made this year:
- Read more
- Write more
- Laugh more [...]
Nepolitano: The System Worked
Not in my wildest dreams would I believe that a US official could be so stupid as to say something like this in the face of unrelenting facts.
And intriguing enough is that it happened on CNN, whose reporting tends to be as supportive of the Obama administration as possible.
Of course, this is coming from the leader of the same department that earlier this year targeted "right-wing extremists" as high-risk for recruiting new members and conducting terrorist activities.
About the only spin one could put on this is that "...the system worked, but it's broke". That perspective behind a statement like this is part of the problem. Saying that everything worked like it's supposed to but it's not supposed to work that way just leaves one wondering how much thought is going into the design of the process that is supposed to be protecting our country.
Clearly the system is broke. To think that someone who has been identified as a terrorist risk like Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab could be allowed onto a passenger jet without careful screening is just insane... and there are 500,000 people on the list he was placed on a month ago! As I shared in my piece at the Des Moines Register yesterday, the entire focus [...]
Mitch McConnell’s Speech December 21
As discussed and promised on The Conservative Reader Report on December 22, here is the full Senate Minority Leader’s speech (Mitch McConnell of Kentucky) just prior to the Monday’s Cloture vote. If you don’t have 13 minutes, you can see a 3 minute...Stay in Touch
