"I happen to love Cleveland," says Elliott Schlang as we sip our drinks in the dark and stylish bar of the Jefferson Hotel, which, to my parochial Northeast Corridor mind, is about as far from Cleveland as you can get. I happen to love Elliott Schlang, and the fact...
POLITICS
The Mixed Legacy of Ronald Reagan
The hyperbole of remembrance that follows the death of any President, as has certainly followed the death of Mr. Reagan, will subside eventually and it will be left to historians to analyze what it was he did as President and whether or not that had any value. The...
On Flag Day Celebrate America’s Core Values: Reason and Individual Rights
Not since the Revolutionary War has America faced a greater threat to its existence than it does today. A worldwide network of terrorists is bent on destroying us and everything we value. All the more reason to make clear on Flag Day the principles for which we stand....
America’s Funeral: Ronald Reagan in Perspective
Ronald Reagan was right that America is man’s last, best hope on earth — it still is — and his goal, to make America great again, means he understood that something had gone terribly wrong.
Talkers vs. Doers, Part 2
The fact that benefits have costs means that those who create these benefits are tempting targets for accusations from those who know how to dramatize the costs. This means that the doers are constantly on the defensive when attacked by the talkers. These attacks are...
Talkers vs. Doers
The big divide in this country is not between Democrats and Republicans, or women and men, but between talkers and doers. Think about the things that have improved our lives the most over the past century -- medical advances, the transportation revolution, huge...
Three Cheers for Bill Cosby, Part II
Bill Cosby's May 17 remarks at a Washington, D.C., gathering commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court decision continues to draw controversy and debate. That's good. Some of the debate highlights a point made by my colleague...
“We Need Ronald Reagan”
Why has the country gone so crazy over Ronald Reagan? Back in 1982, President Reagan boldly told the world in a speech that Communism would end up on "the ash heap of history." At the time most considered this wildly optimistic; seven years later it was fact. Aside...
McCain as Kerry’s Secretary of Defense?
Q: John Kerry is floating Senator John McCain's name as a possible Secretary of Defense. John McCain is a hawkish Republican. How does this square with Kerry being a pacifist, like you claim? A: First of all, you believe Kerry; how wise is it to believe most...
Bush’s Faith-Based Initiative Is an Assault on the Wall Between Church and State
President Bush is very vocal about his religious beliefs; he likes to preach publicly about "the power of faith" and "the vital place of faith in the life of our nation." This does not bother most Americans, who believe that while the President personally wants to...
Rational Exuberance
It was December 1996 when Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, first questioned if "irrational exuberance" had pushed stock prices too far, too fast. Although his comment sent the market into a brief plunge, history proved Greenspan dead wrong....
How Proposed Securities and Exchange Commission Regulations Will Worsen Fund Performance
Investors punished mutual funds in the 2003 late-trading and market-timing scandals the old-fashioned way -- by withdrawing their money and going somewhere else. For instance, shareholders last year pulled $29 billion out of the funds of Putnam Investment Management,...
The Threat of a Faith-Based Defense of America
In the war between reason and religion, declared by militant Islamic fundamentalists, President Bush is firmly on the side of religion. The positions he supports most passionately are those of theocracies: prayer in schools, a national pledge "under God" recited by...
War: Then and Now
It was refreshing recently to see a front page of the New York Times that was not full of editorials disguised as "news" stories, undermining the war and the president. However, it was a souvenir front page, reprinted from the New York Times of June 6, 1944 --...
World Opinion Be Damned: America’s Attempts to Appease “World Opinion” Are Depraved and Suicidal
It is a testament to the perverse priorities of our politicians and journalists that the biggest American outcry over Abu Ghraib has been not about the gruesome decapitation of American Nicholas Berg by terrorists, but about the fact that many Arabs and Europeans are...
Terrorists Attack Already Priced Into Market
This column is going to be about what no investor wants to talk about: another terrorist strike on American soil, and how could it affect the stock market. How likely it is to happen -- and when? "When" is really the only question. Not "if." Who knows how many...
Bashing President Bush Takes Over as Our Number One National Pastime: Part II
Tom Brokaw said it. So it must be true. "There were three big reasons for the United States to go to war against Iraq," said Brokaw. "Weapons of mass destruction, the connection to terrorists and that we were going to establish a kind of higher moral ground there....
Three Cheers for Bill Cosby
May 17 saw several gatherings commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court school desegregation decision in Brown vs. Board of Education. But the event held in Washington, D.C.'s Constitution Hall will be the one to be remembered because of Bill...
The “Working Poor” Scam
BusinessWeek magazine has joined the chorus of misleading rhetoric about "the working poor." Why is this misleading? Let me count the ways. First of all, Census data show that most people who are working are not poor and most people who are poor are not working. The...
The Day After Tomorrow: The Ice Age Cometh?
Coming to a theatre near you on Memorial Day is "The Day After Tomorrow", a movie based on the notion that global warming will lead to a new ice age in America. As science fiction goes, this is as fictional as one can get because there is absolutely no scientific...
Majority Rule: The Tyrants Next Door
There's a funny little radio spot that's been running locally. It's a (fake) phone conversation between a man who wanted his car painted midnight blue and a guy at the paint shop who tells him they've gone with "a stunning shade of lilac" instead. "We just thought...
Buy, Buy, and You’ll Fare Well
Are your surprised that the stock market has broken out of its funk this week, even though it practically seems like the world is coming to an end? If you've been reading this column, you shouldn't be. Last week I said don't worry about high oil prices (they'll come...
Conservativism vs. Individual Rights
Consider the following paragraph in an unsigned editorial that appeared last month in the Wall Street Journal arguing in support of the detention of US citizens such as suspected al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla as enemy combatants without the writ of habeas corpus: In...
America’s New National Pastime: Bashing President Bush
Move over, NASCAR. Out of the way, major league baseball, horseracing or gambling. For bashing President Bush now takes its place as America's No. 1 national pastime. Sure, Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., said the president deceived the American people about why America...
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