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Rise in Food Stamp Reliance Calls Government Benefits into Question
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (18)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Everyone expects people to rely more heavily on subsidies in a downturn and this recession is no different. But what is different, according to the New York Times, is that so many people are now relying on food stamps; the zing of stigma is evaporating.
That's a bad thing, especially for some categories of Americans.
It's one thing for people never-before out of work to lose a job in tough times and rely on food stamps to feed themselves, a spouse and a child or two. It's quite another for people who have large numbers of children on low incomes to rely on other Americans, almost equally pressed in a downturn, to pay to feed those children. That's what's happening to some families in this economy. It calls for a renewed look at how we view responsibility, taxes and benefits.
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Obama's Afghanistan Speech Was a Brilliant Start, But Will This End As Well?
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (6)By Jamie Stiehm, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It was the best possible speech a president about to accept the Nobel Peace Prize could have given as he prepared to renew fighting a long war.
I give Barack Obama enormous credit for going up to West Point yesterday to face young Army officers in training who will bear the brunt of his decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers to rugged, tribal, benighted Afghanistan. You could see the thought written on some of their solemn young faces—so this is what I signed up for, spelled out right here.
The still-young president, 48, did not know his audience well, and neither did they know him after less than a year in office. But the man from Illinois was ready to speak and they were ready to listen with respect, yes sir, with none of the antagonism that accompanied the last Democratic president, Bill Clinton, whenever he walked on military ground.
All in all, Obama played the part of commander in chief extremely well, with a sort of elegiac elegance. He quoted Abraham Lincoln again, but in a different way, much like a prayer.
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Obama's Afghanistan Decision Risks a Democratic Party Civil War
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (6)By Doug Heye, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
"Mr. President, this is not the change we voted for," liberal commentator and radio host, Bill Press, writes today in his "parting shot."
Press' defiance is in reaction to President Barack Obama's decision to send 30,000 troops to Afghanistan in an effort to win the war. There's a small problem, though: This is exactly the change Obama supporters voted for. During the 2008 campaign, Obama's pledge to "listen to the generals on the ground" received standing ovations for its indictment of George W. Bush. If not a rallying cry, it was an important talking point for liberals seeking to highlight how Obama equaled change.
Perhaps the Left assumed Obama didn't actually mean what he said. Whatever their rationale, in opposing Obama on Afghanistan liberals risk creating a civil war within their own party.
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Be Grateful for the Tiger Woods Affair--It Reminds Us He's Human
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (23)By John A. Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
This is a story about Tiger Woods. It begins a long time ago, when I was but a lad, and my father snuck me into the New York Yankees dugout.
Dad was an actual Mad Man in those days, one of the guys whose service as an officer in the South Pacific with Douglas McArthur took the place of the college degree he never had, and won him entry to Manhattan in the golden years, which we all now recognize were not so golden.
He took the Long Island railroad in each day to a Park Ave. skyscraper, hung out in the club car on the way home, and got off at the Cold Spring Harbor station, where Mom would pick him up in our Corvair Monza. I can see him stepping off the train in a brown fedora and tan trench coat, a copy of the Herald Tribune rolled in his pocket, grinning like a young Jack Nicholson. We did not know, until years and sorrow later, what it took from Dad to be a fix-it man's son in the executive suites, where everyone else shared stories from the eating clubs of Princeton. That cost was hidden, like much else.
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Rupert Murdoch vs. Arianna Huffington on the Future of News
Tweet Share on Facebook December 2, 2009 Comment (4)By Linda Killian, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Media baron Rupert Murdoch and aspiring baroness Arianna Huffington had a bit of a smack down Tuesday in Washington with Murdoch calling Internet aggregators, and by extension Huffington and her Post, thieves who use the content of traditional news organizations like Murdoch's Wall Street Journal "without contributing a penny to its production."
But Huffington countered that aggregation "is part of the Web's DNA," essential to the free flow of information and a benefit to news organizations by driving traffic to their websites.
"Promiscuity is not a good thing in relationships but it's a great thing in news," she declared.
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Plummeting Polls Show the Cost of Obama’s Afghanistan Dithering
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2009 Comment (13)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
After dithering for many months, President Barack Obama has finally decided on a course of action for Afghanistan. The new plan, to be announced Tuesday during a speech at the United States Military Academy at West Point, may be costly—but not perhaps as costly as the months of indecision have been.
According to the latest Gallup Poll, Americans are increasingly disappointed in the president's handling of events in Afghanistan. Only 35 percent say they approve of the way he is handling things there, down from 49 percent in September and 56 percent in July, an overall decline of 21 points in just four months.
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What Would Jesus Do? Not Bless the Prosperity Gospel
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2009 Comment (18)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The December issue of the Atlantic magazine has a fascinating cover story entitled, "Did Christianity Cause the Crash?" The gist of the article is, churches preaching the Spenderella doctrine, commonly referred to as the Prosperity Gospel, drove people who could not afford to spend wildly to do so. And the current recession is due in part to overextended credit and its consequent credit crunch.
For several years I’ve been driving by a huge roadside billboard that is updated every few months. It appears on a route I take five or six times per week. It shows an attractive, affluent, African-American couple who formed and run a church together, extolling the virtues of believing in Jesus and believers’ financial rewards.
I have never understood how anyone can read the New Testament and think that Jesus would have supported such poppycock. Yes, he advocated for the poor, fed them, and offered whatever forms of support he could. But he obviously eschewed riches and rich people (throwing the money lenders out of the Temple and so on.) So where and how modern-day churches have been allowed to perpetrate the myth of Christian materialism is beyond my ken. Here's an excerpt from the article:
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Leopold, Loeb and the Curious Case of the Greatest Newspaper Lead Never Written
Tweet Share on Facebook December 1, 2009 Comment (14)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
So. I've returned to Thomas Jefferson St. after taking a few months off for a book leave. Why does it take such effort to write a book? Consider this cautionary tale: the story of The Greatest Newspaper Lead Ever Written.
When I embarked on the task of writing a biography of Clarence Darrow a few years back, I looked forward to passing on a story about the death of Richard Loeb. Along with his gay lover, Nathan Leopold, Loeb killed a 14-year-old boy in Chicago in 1924 for the thrill of it. The public clamored for the death penalty, but with an eloquent plea for mercy, Darrow saved the two teen-aged killers from the gallows.
The "boys," as Darrow called them, were geniuses from wealthy Chicago families. Loeb was, at the time, the youngest student to ever graduate from the University of Michigan.
Leopold lived to a ripe old age in prison, and won parole. But Loeb died one day in 1936. Folks who spent time in the newspaper racket in the late 20th century, as I did, heard how Edwin Lahey of the Chicago Daily News had hammered out, on deadline that afternoon, what must have been the greatest lead ever written.
