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Truman Left In The Middle Of An Unpopular War, A War Of Choice. Truman Didn't Have To Go Into South Korea. And He Was Reviled And Ridiculed For The Stalemate That Resulted. Now, He's Seen As One Of The Great Presidents Of The 20th Century.

-Charles Krauthammer

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Truman Left In The

Charles Krauthammer

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Truman Left In The Middle Of An Unpopular War, A War Of Choice. Truman Didn't Have To Go Into South Korea. And He Was Reviled And Ridiculed For The Stalemate That Resulted. Now, He's Seen As One Of The Great Presidents Of The 20th Century.

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Fairness Through Leveling Is The Essence Of Obamaism.

To His Credit, Obama Didn't Just Come To Washington To Be Someone. Like Reagan, He Came To Washington To Do Something -- To Introduce A Powerful Social Democratic Stream Into America's Deeply And Historically Individualist Polity.

I Don't Really Care What A Public Figure Thinks. I Care About What He Does. Let God Probe His Inner Heart.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

If The President Signs Any Of It, Good. If He Vetoes, It Will Be Clarifying. Who Then Will Be The Party Of No? The Vetoed Legislation Would Become The Framework For A 2016 Gop Platform. Let The Debate Begin.

A Drone Is A High-tech Version Of An Old Army And A Musket. It Ought To Be Used In Somalia To Hunt Bad Guys, But Not In America. I Don't Want To See It Hovering Over Anybody's Home.

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.

Israel Is The Very Embodiment Of Jewish Continuity: It Is The Only Nation On Earth That Inhabits The Same Land, Bears The Same Name, Speaks The Same Language, And Worships The Same God That It Did 3,000 Years Ago. You Dig The Soil And You Find Pottery From Davidic Times, Coins From Bar Kokhba, And 2,000-year-old Scrolls Written In A Script Remarkably Like The One That Today Advertises Ice Cream At The Corner Candy Store.

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.

Winning Control Of The Senate Would Allow Republicans To Pass A Whole Range Of Measures Now Being Held Up By Reid, Often At The Behest Of The White House. Make It A Major Reform Agenda. The Centerpiece Might Be Tax Reform, Both Corporate And Individual. It Is Needed, Popular And Doable. Then Go For The Low-hanging Fruit Enjoying Wide Bipartisan Support, Such As The Keystone Xl Pipeline And Natural Gas Exports, Most Especially To Eastern Europe. One Could Then Add Border Security, Energy Deregulation And Health-care Reform That Repeals The More Onerous Obamacare Mandates.

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

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.

There's No Free Lunch. If You Want An Industrial Economy, You Need Energy. If You Want Energy, It Will Produce Pollution. You Can Have It In Two Forms. You Can Have It Dissipated In The Atmosphere - Like Carbon Dioxide - Which Then You Cannot Recover, Or You Can Have The Waste Concentrated In One Small Space Like Nuclear. That Is Far Easier To Deal With. The Idea That You Can Be Able To Create Renewable Energy At A Price Anywhere Near The Current Price For Oil Or Gas Or Coal Is A Fantasy.

Ideas Matter. Legislative Proposals Matter. Slick Campaigns And Dazzling Speeches Can Work For A While, But The Magic Always Wears Off.

The International Community Lies At The Center Of The Obama Foreign Policy. Unfortunately, It Is A Fiction. There Is No Such Thing. Different Countries Have Different Histories, Geographies, Necessities, And Interests. There's No Natural, Inherent, Or Enduring International Community.

It’s Not The Advertising - It’s The Dog Food. Every Time Anybody Has A Look At It Or Has A Lick Of It, They Don’t Like It.

The Great Divide In American Foreign Policy Thinking Is Between Those Who Believe In Paper And Those Who Believe In Power.

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.

Middleness Is The Very Enemy Of The Bold.

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

Passing A Law Like The Assault Weapons Ban Is A Symbolic - Purely Symbolic - Move In That Direction. Its Only Real Justification Is Not To Reduce Crime But To Desensitize The Public To The Regulation Of Weapons In Preparation For Their Ultimate Confiscation.

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

Identity Politics

When A Party Is In Opposition, It Opposes. That's Its Job. But When It Comes To Power, It Must Govern. Easy Rhetoric Is Over, The Press Of Reality Becomes Irresistible. By Necessity, It Adopts Some Of The Policies It Had Once Denounced. And A New National Consensus Is Born.

Torture Is An Impermissible Evil. Except Under Two Circumstances. The First Is The Ticking Time Bomb. An Innocent's Life Is At Stake. The Bad Guy You Have Captured Possesses Information That Could Save This Life. He Refuses To Divulge. In Such A Case, The Choice Is Easy.

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

Every New President Flatters Himself That He, Kinder And Gentler, Is Beginning The World Anew. Yet, When Barack Obama In His Inaugural Address Reached Out To Muslims By Saying, 'to The Muslim World, We Seek A New Way Forward, Based On Mutual Interest And Mutual Respect,' His Formulation Was Needlessly Defensive And Apologetic.

Mutual Interest

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

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

Science Has Everything To Say About What Is Possible. Science Has Nothing To Say About What Is Permissible.

Preemption Is A Kind Of Pre-deterrence That Stops The Threat At An Earlier, Safer Stage.

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Perfectly Normal

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

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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.

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

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I Think The Editorial Page Of The Washington Post Is The Best In The Country. I Think The Editorials - Considering It's A Liberal Town, Liberal Constituency And From The Liberal Tradition - I Think It's The Best Editorial Page Around. It's Quite Balanced.

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.

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Obama Was Quite Serious When He Said He Was Going To Change The World. And Now He Has A National Crisis, A Personal Mandate, A Pliant Congress, A Desperate Public - And, At His Disposal, The Greatest Pot Of Money In Galactic History.

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

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

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.

The Free Lunch Is The Essence Of Modern Liberalism.

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.

Chess: It's Like Alcohol. It's A Drug. I Have To Control It, Or It Could Overwhelm Me. I Have A Regular Monday Night Game At My Home, And I Do Play A Little Online.

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 Joy Of Losing Consists In This: Where There Are No Expectations, There Is No Disappointment.

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.

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.

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.

We Must Now Brace Ourselves For Disquisitions On Peer Pressure, Adolescent Anomie, And Rage.

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.

In The Middle Ages People Took Potions For Their Ailments. In The 19th Century They Took Snake Oil. Citizens Of Today's Shiny, Technological Age Are Too Modern For That. They Take Antioxidants And Extract Of Cactus Instead.

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

The Left Is Entering A New Phase Of Ideological Agitation No Longer Trying To Win The Debate But Stopping Debate Altogether, Banishing From Public Discourse Any And All Opposition. The Proper Word For That Attitude Is Totalitarian. It Declares Certain Controversies Over And Visits Serious Consequences From Social Ostracism To Vocational Defenestration Upon Those Who Refuse To Be Silenced.

I Don't Mind Going Into A Liberal Lion's Den. That's Where You Test Yourself.

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.

Increasing Public Safety Almost Always Means Restricting Liberties.

Clashes Of Values And The Struggle For Primacy Constitute A Constant In Human History That Accounts For That Other Constant - Conflict And War.

I Think If You're Going To Master Policy, Especially World Affairs, You've Got To Know History.

Obsession With Self Is The Motif Of Our Time.

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

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

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

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.

I Would Say I See Myself As A Psychiatrist In Remission.

Ron Paul Is Not Going To Be President, So We Don't Have To Worry About Who's Going To Be In His Cabinet.

The Peasants Have Seen The Future - Greece And France - And Concluded That It Does Not Work. Hence Their Opposition To Obama's Proudly Transformational New Foundation Agenda. Their Logic Is Impeccable: Only The Most Blinkered Intellectual Could Be Attempting To Introduce Social Democracy To America Precisely When The World's Foremost Exemplar Of That Model - Europe - Is In Chaotic Meltdown.

[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.

Don't Touch My Junk, You Airport Security Goon - My Package Belongs To No One But Me, And Do You Really Think I'm A Nigerian Nut Job Preparing For My 72-virgin Orgy By Blowing My Johnson To Kingdom Come?

The Conservative Idea Is Not That Government Has No Role. You Might Have Argued That In The Thirties When Conservatives Opposed The New Deal.

Guerrilla War Is A Test Of Wills. Obama's Actual Objectives - Rollback In Iraq, Containment In Syria - Are Not Unreasonable. But They Require Commitment And Determination. In Other Words, Will. You Can't Just Make One Speech Declaring War, Then Disappear And Go Fundraising.

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

Obama Has Committed The U.s. To War On The Islamic State. To Then Allow Within A Month An Allied Enclave To Be Overrun - And Perhaps Annihilated - Would Be A Major Blow.

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

Loyalty To The President Is Great, But Loyalty To Truth, Integrity, And Country Is Even Better.

History Is Not Just Cruel. It Is Witty.

The Iraquis Can See It. The Kurds Can Feel It. The Jihadists Are Counting On It.

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.

The Obama Foreign Policy, In Broad Strokes, Has Been A Disaster.

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.

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.

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.

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

Ted Cruz Is A Patriot. He Believes In What He Does. He's Done Marvels In Mobilizing Conservatives, Mobilizing Americans Concerned About The Direction Of The Ever-expanding Entitlement State Under Obama, And Particularly The Threat It Is To Freedom. I Disagree With His Tactics, But I Agree Entirely With His Objectives.

The Liberal Vision Of America Is That It Should Be Less Arrogant, Less Unilateral, More Internationalist. In Obama's View, America Would Subsume Itself Under A Fuzzy Internationalism In Which The International Community, Which I Think Is A Fiction, Governs Itself Through The U.n.

Somebody Actually Said That I'm The Only Entity On Earth, Other Than Rogue States, That Has Received An Apology From The White House.

I Think The First Thing Is To Recognize A Mistake That Obama Made. And Others Have Made In Thinking That You Can Revolutionize A System That's Unbelievably Complex And Interlinked, One-sixth Of The Economy. That Was A Mistake Because Whenever You Change One Thing, It Changes 80 Other Things, And Now If You're Changing Everything At Once, You Have No Idea What The Outcome Is Going To Be And You Get All Of These Unintended Side Effects.

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.

In The Liberal Remake Of 'casablanca,' The Police Captain Comes Upon The Scene Of The Shooting And Orders His Men To 'round Up The Usual Weapons.' It's Always The Weapon And Never The Shooter.

Where There Is A Confluence Of Interests Among Nations, As, For Example The Swine Flu Or Polio, You Can Get Well Functioning International Institutions Like The World Health Organization. And You Can Act. Climate Change Is Different, Because The Science Remains Hypothetical And The Potential Costs Staggering.

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.

If Russia Were To Do Something That It Could Do, It Looks Like It Might Even Be Preparing To Do, To Invade Ukraine And Essentially To Dismember It, This Would Be The One Item That Could Reflect Really Badly On Trump Because Of The Warm Way He Spoke About Putin.

If Obama Has His Way, The Change That Is Coming Is A New America: "fair," Leveled And Social Democratic. Obama Didn't Get Elected To Warranty Your Muffler. He's Here To Warranty Your Life.

Washington Is The Only Place In The World Where A Gaffe Is When A Politician Accidently Speaks The Truth.

For Liberals, The Observation That 'the Peasants Are Revolting' Is A Pun. For Conservatives, It Is Cause For Uncharacteristic Optimism. No Matter How Far The Ideological Pendulum Swings In The Short Term, In The End The Bedrock Common Sense Of The American People Will Prevail.

When You Have The Worst Disaster In American History, You've Got To Be Attuned To Expectations,.

American History

Third Parties In America Gravitate Not Only To The Extremes, But To Irrelevance. (john Anderson's Upcoming Presidential Campaign Will Undoubtedly Confirm Both Tendencies.)

Ted Cruz Is Not The Official Spokesman For American Conservatism. If You Want Somebody Who Has Been Out There, Who Has Offered An Alternative - The Person Who Offered An Alternative, For Example, Is... Paul Ryan.

Truman Left In The Middle Of An Unpopular War, A War Of Choice. Truman Didn't Have To Go Into South Korea. And He Was Reviled And Ridiculed For The Stalemate That Resulted. Now, He's Seen As One Of The Great Presidents Of The 20th Century.

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.

The Democratic Line Is That The Republican House Does Nothing But Block And Oppose. In Fact, It Has Passed Hundreds Of Bills Only To Have Them Die Upon Reaching The Desk Of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He Has Rendered The Senate Inert By Simply Ensuring That Any Bill That Might Present A Politically Difficult Vote For His Democratic Colleagues Never Even Comes To The Floor.

Majority Leader

If We Insist That Public Life Be Reserved For Those Whose Personal History Is Pristine, We Are Not Going To Get Paragons Of Virtue Running Our Affairs. We Will Get The Very Rich, Who Contract Out The Messy Things In Life The Very Dull, Who Have Nothing To Hide And Nothing To Show And The Very Devious, Expert At Covering Their Tracks And Ambitious Enough To Risk Their Discovery.

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.

I Believe In What I Believe, And I Think After All These Years I've Heard A Lot Of Arguments, And I'm Convinced By The Superiority Of The Arguments That Are Made On The Conservative Side. I Think That's A Better Way To Run A Society.

Now This Is A Way To Approach Our Healthcare Problems: Increase The Number Of Tax Collectors And Decrease The Number Of Doctors - Brilliant!

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.

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.

Under Our Constitutional System, The Executive Executes The Laws That Congress Has Passed. It Should Not Be Executing Laws That Congress Has Rejected.

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

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?

An Oil Crisis Looms, Prices Are Spiking - And Our President Is Extolling Algae. After Solyndra, Keystone And Promises Of Seaweed In Their Gas Tanks, Americans Sense A President So Ideologically Antipathetic To Fossil Fuels - Which We Possess In Staggering Abundance - That He Is Utterly Unserious About The Real World Of Oil In Which The Rest Of Us Live.

If Harriet Miers Were Not A Crony Of The President Of The United States, Her Nomination To The Supreme Court Would Be A Joke, As It Would Have Occurred To No One Else To Nominate Her.

With Our Financial House On Fire, Obama Makes Clear Both In In His Speech And His Budget That The Essence Of His Presidency Will Be The Transformation Of Health Care, Education And Energy.

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

It Is An Axiom Of Political Life That You Never Raise Expectations, Whether In A Political Or Military Campaign, Because Your Defeats Are Then Magnified And Your Victories Discounted.

The War Is Not Going Well And It Is Time To Say Why. It Has Been Fought With Half-measures. It Has Been Fought With An Eye On The Wishes Of Our "coalition Partners." It Has Been Fought To Assuage The Arab "street." It Has Been Fought To Satisfy The Diplomats Rather Than The Generals... Why Have We Not Loosed The B-52s And The B-2s To Carpet-bomb Taliban Positions? And Why Are We Giving The Taliban Sanctuary In Their Cities? We Could Drop Leaflets Giving Civilians 48 Hours To Evacuate, After Which The Cities Become Legitimate Military Targets.

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.

History Has Blessed Us With All The Freedom And Advantages Of Multiculturalism. But It Has Also Blessed Us, Because Of The Accident Of Our Origins, With The Linguistic Unity That Brings A Critically Needed Cohesion To A Nation As Diverse, Multiracial And Multiethnic As America. Why Gratuitously Throw Away That Priceless Asset? How Mindless To Call The Desire To Retain It 'racist.

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.

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

Whenever You're Faced With An Explanation Of What's Going On In Washington, The Choice Between Incompetence And Conspiracy, Always Choose Incompetence.

What Politicians Do Not Understand Is That [ian] Wilmut Discovered Not So Much A Technical Trick As A New Law Of Nature. We Now Know That An Adult Mammalian Cell Can Fire Up All The Dormant Genetic Instructions That Shut Down As It Divides And Specializes And Ages, And Thus Can Become A Source Of New Life. You Can Outlaw Technique; You Cannot Repeal Biology. Writing After Wilmut's Successful Cloning Of The Sheep, Dolly, That Research On The Cloning Of Human Beings Cannot Be Suppressed.

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.

I'm A Former Red Sox Fan, Now Fully Rehabilitated.

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

In An Essay 10 Years Ago, I Pointed Out That It Is Utterly Logical For Polygamy Rights To Follow Gay Rights. After All, If Traditional Marriage Is Defined As The Union Of (1) Two People Of (2) Opposite Gender, And If, As Advocates Of Gay Marriage Insist, The Gender Requirement Is Nothing But Prejudice, Exclusion And An Arbitrary Denial Of One's Autonomous Choices In Love, Then The First Requirement - The Number Restriction (two And Only Two) - Is A Similarly Arbitrary, Discriminatory And Indefensible Denial Of Individual Choice.

Individual Choice

If Fences Don't Work, Why Is There One Around The White House.

[barack Obama Failed To Sell A Health Care Reform Plan To American Voters] Because The Utter Implausibility Of Its Central Promise - Expanded Coverage At Lower Cost - Led Voters To Conclude That It Would Lead Ultimately To More Government, More Taxes And More Debt.

The Indecisiveness And Ambivalence So Devastatingly Described By Both Of Obama's Previous Secretaries Of Defense, Leon Panetta And Bob Gates, Are Already Beginning To Characterize The Syria Campaign.

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