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Democrats Should Pray There's No Federal Government Shutdown
Tweet Share on Facebook February 25, 2011 Comment (11)Time magazine is reporting that a secret GOP plan is in the works to avert a government shutdown. House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell are drafting a plan that includes $4 billion in cuts and would fund the government for two weeks that could go to the House Rules Committee this Monday, and could pass the House by Wednesday. Right now, if no deal is reached, the government will shut down after the current funding, which runs through Friday, March 4, expires. Both sides agree that more time is needed for negotiations, and this would provide two more weeks.
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Obama Should Stress Capitalism in Response to Middle East Unrest
Tweet Share on Facebook February 17, 2011 Comment (4)As the Obama administration wrestles with crafting the best response to what’s going on in the Middle East and North Africa, here’s a suggestion: talk about democratic capitalism. The great neoconservative and Catholic theologian Michael Novak wrote in his book, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism that our market-oriented political and economic system offers freedom from three things: repressive tyranny, oppression of information and ideas, and poverty. When Novak wrote that book in the 1980s, he was defending capitalism against the claims of Soviet collectivism; these days many of those same arguments for entrepreneurial freedom work in the face of repressive autocrats and extremist religious states in the Middle East. Tyranny, oppression and poverty are all in great supply in that region of the world right now, and while the administration seems to be treading lightly on whether to call for outright democracy in troubled nations this week, there’s no downside to calling for free markets and free people. [See photos of the Egyptian uprising.]
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Why Conservatives Who Skipped CPAC Over Gay Rights Erred
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2011 Comment (23)Those who boycotted CPAC because conservative gay-rights group GOProud was a cosponsor made a strategic mistake. Social conservatives who disagree with gay rights should not remove themselves from the debate--they risk looking, at best, out of touch and worse, intolerant.
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CPAC Smart Not to Feature Beck, Limbaugh
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2011 Comment (10)I noticed a big change from prior years at CPAC, the nation’s largest conservative gathering. Specifically, the closing speaker, Tea-party endorsed freshman Rep. Allen West is a symbolic departure from the last two closers, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck.
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CPAC: The Deficit Is Too Damn High!
Tweet Share on Facebook February 12, 2011 Comment (6)This just in: according to the Daily Caller my favorite candidate (so far) for 2012, Jimmy “The Rent is Too Damn High” McMillan, Friday made an appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference here in Washington. Apparently McMillan took CPAC by storm before announcing on Revolution Radio--a hip new Internet-based conservative radio station at--that he was launching a Republican campaign for president.
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Obama, Congress Need to Better Explain the Budget Deficit Danger
Tweet Share on Facebook February 11, 2011 Comment (2)This morning’s latest poll numbers from Pew are a confusing mish-mash of conflicting priorities and contradictory statements: The voters are still worried about the deficit and don’t want to increase spending, but...they don’t actually want to cut spending either. Some think the economy is getting better...some don’t. Some think jobs should be the top priority...but a growing number are worried about rising prices. There’s something for everybody in the poll, and I’m sure both sides will use the stats to their advantage.
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No Nobel Peace Prize for WikiLeaks's Julian Assange
Tweet Share on Facebook February 4, 2011 Comment (39)You may not be aware that in the public voting for Time’s Person of the Year award for 2010, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange led the voting. The second-place finisher was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, not exactly a household name but currently the prime minister of Turkey, and third place went to Lady Gaga. Time’s editors overrode the voters’ choice and instead chose Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. It strikes me that Assange’s votes from readers say less about his overall popularity and more about the political leanings of Time magazine’s readers and the activism of those voting. Along those lines, there doesn’t seem to be any limit on the number of times readers could vote. (And what’s with the prime minister of Turkey getting second place?)
