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Courage Is Not A Quality One Normally Associates With Mathematicians. Yet It Should Apply To People Who Work In Their Attics In Secret For Seven Years Without Cease On A Problem That Has Eluded The Greatest Mathematical Minds Since First Proposed In 1637.

-Charles Krauthammer

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Courage Is Not A

Charles Krauthammer

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Courage Is Not A Quality One Normally Associates With Mathematicians. Yet It Should Apply To People Who Work In Their Attics In Secret For Seven Years Without Cease On A Problem That Has Eluded The Greatest Mathematical Minds Since First Proposed In 1637.

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Identity Politics Is The Mother's Milk Of The Democratic Left.

Identity Politics

Consider The Oddity Of Those Drug Commercials On Television. Fifteen Seconds Of The Purported Therapeutic Effort, Followed By About 45 Seconds Of A Rapidly Muttered List Of Horrific Possible Side Effects. When The Ad Is Over, I Can't Remember A Thing About What The Pill Is Supposed To Do, Except Perhaps Cause Nausea, Liver Damage, Projectile Vomiting, A Nasty Rash, A Four-hour Erection, And Sudden Death. Sudden Death Is My Favorite Because There Is Something Comical About It Being A Side Effect. What Exactly Is The Main Effect In That Case? Relief From Abdominal Bloating?

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It Doesn't Take A Genius To See What Happens When The Entitlement State Outgrows The Economy Upon Which It Rests. The Time Of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal, Spain, The Rest Of Insolvent Social-democratic Europe — And Now Detroit — Is The Time For Conservatives To Raise The Banner Of Stein's Law And Yell "stop." You Can Kick The Can Down The Road, But At Some Point It Falls Over A Cliff.

This Is A Formidable Enemy. To Dismiss It As A Bunch Of 'cowards' Perpetuating 'senseless Acts Of Violence' Is Complacent Nonsense. People Willing To Kill Thousands Of Innocents While They Kill Themselves Are Not Cowards. They Are Deadly Vicious Warriors And Need To Be Treated As Such.

Pass Legislation. When Obama Signs, You've Shown Seriousness And The Ability To Govern. When He Vetoes, You've Clarified The Differences Between Party Philosophies And Prepared The Ground For 2016.

Where Religion Is Trivialized, One Is Unlikely To Find Persecution.

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Two Decades Ago, However, Socialism And Communism Died Rudely, Then Were Buried Forever By The Empirical Demonstration Of The Superiority Of Market Capitalism Everywhere From Thatcher's England To Deng's China, Where Just The Partial Abolition Of Socialism Lifted More People Out Of Poverty More Rapidly Than Ever In Human History.

In Science, Modesty And Genius Do Not Coexist Well Together. (in Washington, Modesty And Cleverness Don't.) Einstein Is Perhaps The Most Famous Exception To The Rule.

Exception To The Rule

In Reality, Kyoto Was A Huge Transfer Of Resources From The United States To The Third World, Under The Guise Of Environmental Protection.

So Far As Im Concerned, Ronald Reagan Was The Best President. Nixon Was The Worst. Some Of His Policies Were Okay, But He Disgraced The Office.

In The Course Of His Presidency, Obama Has Gone From An Almost Magical Charismatic Figure To An Ordinary Politician. Ordinary. Average.

The 2014 Election Has Given The Gop The Rare Opportunity To Retroactively Redeem Its Brand. The Conventional Perception, Incessantly Repeated By Democrats And The Media, Is That Washington Dysfunction Is The Work Of The Party Of No. Expose The Real Agent Of Do-nothing. Show That, When Harry Reid Can No Longer Consign House-passed Legislation To Oblivion, Congress Can Actually Work.

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This Week, Iranian-backed Houthi Rebels Seized Control Of The Yemeni Government, Heretofore Pro-american. In September, They Overran Sanaa, The Capital. On Tuesday, They Seized The Presidential Palace. On Thursday, They Forced The President To Resign.

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A Three-year Diet Of Rubber Chicken And Occasional Crow.

A One-hour Work-week...would Minimize The Damage That Congress Can Do.

Highfalutin Moral Principles Are Impossible Guides To Foreign Policy. At Worst, They Reflect Hypocrisy; At Best, Extreme Naivete.

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Mutual Interest

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American History

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Take All Your Dukes And Marquesses And Earls And Viscounts, Pack Them Into One Chamber, Call It The House Of Lords To Satisfy Their Pride And Then Strip It Of All Political Power. It's A Solution So Perfectly Elegant And Preposterous That Only The British Could Have Managed It.

So A Holocaust-denying, Virulently Anti-semitic, Aspiring Genocidist, On The Verge Of Acquiring Weapons Of The Apocalypse, Believes That The End Is Not Only Near But Nearer Than The Next American Presidential Election. (pity The Democrats. They Cannot Catch A Break.) This Kind Of Man Would Have, To Put It Gently, Less Inhibition About Starting Armageddon Than A Normal Person.

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Perfectly Normal

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Majority Leader

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Americans Are Not Intrinsically Imperial, But We Ended Up Dominant By Default: Europe Disappeared After The Second World War, The Soviet Union Disappeared In 1991, So Here We Are.

It Is An Old Liberal Theme That Conservative Ideas, Being Red In Tooth And Claw, Cannot Possibly Emerge From Any Notion Of The Public Good.

If You Subsidize Apples, You Get More Apples; If You Subsidize Unemployment, You Get More Of It.

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After Endless Days Of Commuting On The Freeway To An Antiseptic, Sealed-window Office, There Is A Great Urge To Backpack In The Woods And Build A Fire.

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Individual Choice

Obama's Democrats Have Become The Part Of No. Real Cuts To Federal Budget? No. Entitlement Reform? No. Tax Reform? No. Breaking The Corrupt And Fiscally Unsustainable Symbiosis Between Public-sector Unions And State Governments? Hell No.

Better To Be Paralyzed From The Neck Down Than The Neck Up

History Is Not Just Cruel. It Is Witty.

I Happen To Believe That The Preemption School Is Correct, That The Risks Of Allowing Saddam Hussein To Acquire His Weapons Will Only Grow With Time.

There's A Reason Why In New York Harbor We Have The Statue Of Liberty, Not The Statue Of Equality.

I'm Not Against International Institutions That Would Try To Tackle Global Warming. But The Way To Go, At Least In The Short Run, Is To Go To Nuclear Power. It's Amazing To Me That People Who Are So Alarmed About Global Warming Are So Reluctant To Adopt The Obvious Short-term Solution - The Bridge Until The Day When We Have Affordable Renewable Energy - Of Nuclear Power.

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There Used To Be A Cruel Joke That Said Brazil Is The Country Of The Future, And Always Will Be; Obama Is The Brazil Of Today's Politicians. He Has Obviously Achieved Nothing.

The Houthi Have Local Religious Grievances, Being Shiites In A Majority Sunni Land. But They Are Also Agents Of Shiite Iran, Which Arms, Trains, And Advises Them. Their Slogan - 'god Is Great. Death To America. Death To Israel' - Could Have Been Written In Persian.

This Is How The Great Post-partisan, Post-racial, New Politics Presidency Ends - Not With A Bang, Not With A Whimper, But With A Desperate Election-eve Plea For Ethnic Retribution.

I Distrust All Multiculturalism, Liberal Or Conservative. The Balkans Amply Demonstrate The Perils Of Balkanization.

Obama Is Clearly A Narcissist In The Non-scientific Use Of The Word. He Is So Self-involved, You See It From His Rise.there’s Not Anyone Of Independent Stature Around Him. There Was In The First Term, Because He Needed Them To Prop Him Up. But Now That He Entered A Second Term, He’s The Master Of The Universe, So There’s Nobody Around Him. He Is Impervious To Outside Advice, Real Advice That He Takes.

The Brady Bill's Only Effect Will Be To Desensitize The Public To Regulation Of Weapons In Preparation For Their Ultimate Confiscation.

Baseball Is A Slow, Boring, Complex, Cerebral Game That Doesn't Lend Itself To Histrionics. You "take In" A Baseball Game, Something Odd To Say About A Football Or Basketball Game, With The Clock Running And The Bodies Flying.

If You Believe That Health Care Is A Public Good To Be Guaranteed By The State, Then A Single-payer System Is The Next Best Alternative. Unfortunately, It Is Fiscally Unsustainable Without Rationing.

I Envy People Who Write Easily. I Enjoy The Process, But It's Not Easeful For Me.

As The Romance Of Manned Space Exploration Has Waned, The Drive Today Is To Find Our Living, Thinking Counterparts In The Universe. For All The Excitement, However, The Search Betrays A Profound Melancholy - A Lonely Species In A Merciless Universe Anxiously Awaits An Answering Voice Amid Utter Silence.

Great Leaders Are Willing To Retire Unloved And Unpopular As The Price For Great Exertion.

Middleness Is The Very Enemy Of The Bold.

I Don't Think You Can Pump Carbon Dioxide Into The Atmosphere Indefinitely And Not Have A Reaction. But There Are Great Scientists Such As Freeman Dyson, One Of The Greatest Physicists Of The Last Hundred Years, Who Has Studied The Question, Who Believes Quite The Opposite. The Reason Transnational Action Is So Difficult Is Because The Major Problem With Climate Change Is, A, That There Is No Consensus, And, B, That The Economic Cost Is Simply Staggering. Reversing It Completely Might Mean Undoing The Modern Industrial Economy.

The Results Of The Great Society Experiments Started Coming In And Began Showing That, For All Its Good Intentions, The War On Poverty Was Causing Irreparable Damage To The Very Communities It Was Designed To Help.

I Am Not Religious. I Do Not Believe That Personhood Is Conferred Upon Conception. But I Also Do Not Believe That A Human Embryo Is The Moral Equivalent Of A Hangnail And Deserves No More Respect Than An Appendix.

To Go Into Ukraine And To Take Over, To Invade Crimea, Is A Huge Step. And [russian President Vladimir Putin] Would Only Have Done It With A President Who Has Shown From The Very Beginning That [president Obama] Is Living In A Fantasy World...they Imagine The World As A New Interconnected World Where Climate Change Is The Biggest Threat And They Are Shocked That The Russians Actually Are Interested In Territory.

Doves Oppose War On The Grounds That The Risks Exceed The Gains. War With Iraq Could Be Very Costly, Possibly Degenerating Into Urban Warfare.

It Is Ridiculous To Sue The President On A Wednesday Because He Oversteps The Law, As He Has Done A Dozen Times Illegally And Unconstitutionally, And Then On A Thursday Say That He Should Overstep The Law, Contradict The Law That Passed In 2008 And Deal With This Himself.

Fox News Is No Monopoly. It Is A Singular Minority In A Sea Of Liberal Media. Abc, Nbc, Cbs, Pbs, Npr, Cnn, Msnbc Vs. Fox. The Lineup Is So Unbalanced As To Be Comical - And That Doesn't Even Include The Other Commanding Heights Of The Culture That Are Firmly, Flagrantly Liberal: Hollywood, The Foundations, The Universities, The Elite Newspapers.

Every Two Years The American Politics Industry Fills The Airwaves With The Most Virulent, Scurrilous, Wall-to-wall Character Assassination Of Nearly Every Political Practitioner In The Country - And Then Declares Itself Puzzled That America Has Lost Trust In Its Politicians.

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If [bush's] Successors Don't Screw It Up, Within 10 Years Nasa Will Have Us Back To Where We Belong -- On Other Worlds.

The Medical Malpractice System Is Totally Out Of Control. Everybody In The System Knows It. And It's Not Just Of The Outrageous Judgments, It's Not Just The Fact That Some People Get Millions Of Dollars, Others Get Nothing, And The One People Who Get Rich Are Lawyered, It's Just That It Causes Doctors To Practice Defensive Medicine.

There Is A Mystique About Psychiatry That People Think That You Have Some Kind Of A Magical Lens, You Know, Superman's X-ray Vision Into The Soul. One Of The Reasons I Left Psychiatry Is That I Didn't Believe That.

Some Geopolitical Conflicts Are Morally Complicated. The Israel-gaza War Is Not. It Possesses A Moral Clarity Not Only Rare But Excruciating. [...] For Hamas, The Only Thing More Prized Than Dead Jews Are Dead Palestinians.

Fairness Through Leveling Is The Essence Of Obamaism.

Tuesday's Victory Was Big. But It Did Nothing More Than Level The Playing Field And Give You A Shot. Take It.

There Is No Comparing The Brutality And Cynicism Of Today's Pop Culture With That Of Forty Years Ago: From High Noon To Robocop Is A Long Descent.

After The Soviet Collapse, Marxism Is A Relic, A Pathetic Anachronism Reduced To Its Last Redoubts: North Korea, Cuba, And The English Departments Of The More Expensive American Universities.

Post-watergate Morality, By Which Anything Left Private Is Taken As Presumptive Evidence Of Wrongdoing.

I Don't Know About You, But I Lie Awake Nights Worrying About Canadian Uranium. I Know These People. I Grew Up There. You Have No Idea What They're Capable Of Doing. If Sidney Crosby Hadn't Scored That Goal To Win The Olympic Gold Medal, There's No Telling What Might Have Ensued.

Hawks Favor War On The Grounds That Saddam Hussein Is Reckless, Tyrannical And Instinctively Aggressive, And That If He Comes Into Possession Of Nuclear Weapons In Addition To The Weapons Of Mass Destruction He Already Has, He Is Likely To Use Them Or Share Them With Terrorists. The Threat Of Mass Death On A Scale Never Before Seen Residing In The Hands Of An Unstable Madman Is Intolerable – And Must Be Preempted.

Mass Destruction

[i]t Is More Than Slightly Ironic That Democrats, The Fiercely Pro-choice Party, Reserve Free Choice For Aborting A Fetus, While Denying It For Such Matters As Choosing Your Child's School Or Joining A Union.

When Under Attack, No Country Is Obligated To Collect Permission Slips From Allies To Strike Back.

The Only Reason The President Insists On Raising [tax] Rates Is Because He Knows It Will Destroy Republican Unity, It Will Cause A Complete Fracture Of The Republican Majority In The House, It Will Hand Him A Congress That He Can Then Manipulate For The Next Two Years At Least Because The Republicans Will Be Neutered. ... This Is Entirely A Political Action, A Way To Get A Surrender From The Republicans.

Obama Is A Man Of First-class Intellect And First-class Temperament. But His Character Remains Highly Suspect.

I Would Write My Editorials Using A Manual Typewriter In Pitch-black Darkness... I Would Produce The Whole Thing Without Having Seen The Text.

For All The Sublimity Of Art, Physics, Music, Mathematics, And Other Manifestations Of Human Genius, Everything Depends On The Mundane, Frustrating, Often Debased Vocation Known As Politics (and Its Most Exacting Subspecialty - Statecraft). Because If We Don't Get Politics Right, Everything Else Risks Extinction.

Courage Is Not A Quality One Normally Associates With Mathematicians. Yet It Should Apply To People Who Work In Their Attics In Secret For Seven Years Without Cease On A Problem That Has Eluded The Greatest Mathematical Minds Since First Proposed In 1637.

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