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Oil Spill Cleanup, Census Can't Hide Obama's Jobs Problem
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (9)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The jobs figures released Friday are not good news for President Barack Obama.
Despite the massive amounts of government spending that the White House said would stimulate the U.S. economy, only about 41,000 of the new jobs created were in the private sector. The vast majority of the new jobs, about 95 percent, were jobs in the government sector, many of which are tied to the ongoing U.S. census.
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More Republican Women Running for Congress Due to Economic Issues
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (6)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
According to Liz Halloran at NPR (a former U.S. Newser), an unprecedented number of Republican women are either running in House and Senate primaries this summer or have already won them. “So many are campaigning that many conservative women are anticipating strong gains in their congressional numbers come November,” Halloran reports. This is great news--no matter what your political views--as more and more women are feeling empowered enough to enter politics and run for office. It’s always good for our democracy when more Americans want to participate in politics.
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Study Shows Alarming Teen Views on Pregnancy, Contraception
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (23)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
It's a sad day in America when almost 20 percent of teens tell government researchers they rely on the rhythm method to prevent pregnancy. But it's what Centers for Disease Control researchers found in a report released earlier this week.
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Perfect Game Blown Call, the iPad, and Other Summer Musings
Tweet Share on Facebook June 4, 2010 Comment (3)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Some random thoughts for a summer Friday:
1. Major League Baseball has a new asterisk. Armando Galarraga got cheated out of an “official” perfect game when the lords of the league refused to overrule a call that even the umpire in question says was wrong.
But there’s no need to weep for Armando. Over time, Galarraga’s sublime effort will be mentioned and remembered more than any other perfect game--except that thrown by Don Larsen in the 1956 World Series.
Galarraga will get a footnote in every baseball book and a display of his own in Cooperstown, no doubt, as the victim of the worst call ever. And, hopefully, he’ll go down in history as the guy that brought instant replay to the sport.
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Washington Post Wrong on Nixon, Malek, and Jews
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (5)By Peter Roff, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
When Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell tapped businessman Fred Malek to lead a panel to study the state’s over-spending problem, fiscally minded conservatives cheered. A tough man with a record of considerable success in the private sector, Malek seemed like just the guy to lead the discussion of where to swing the budget ax in Richmond to balance the books without raising taxes or cutting too deeply into politically popular programs.
The Washington Post, which is something of a house organ for the Democratic Party, used Malek’s appointment as an excuse to reach back 40 years and revisit his time as a mid-level aide in the Nixon White House when he made, as he himself has for some time admitted, an error in judgment.
In a story that appeared Thursday the Post allowed national Democrats to charge that “documents recently posted on the National Archives Web site ‘raise new questions about Mr. Malek's involvement in targeting and removing Jews from their jobs.’”
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Israel Flotilla Attack Strains U.S. Relations
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (67)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
There are times when nations make big mistakes, and there are other times when, confronted with golden opportunity, countries just fritter it away. The Bush administration had its test, in that moment when all Americans were united after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. It chose, almost inexplicably, to divide the nation instead.
And the state of Israel had an opportunity, as well, on Sept. 12, 2001. America and Islam had each other's full attention, and everyone knew that solving the Palestinian problem would remove a major irritant in that relationship. And even if one accepts the Israeli argument that Hamas was an immoveable stumbling block, the opportunity was there for Israel to strengthen its historic ties with the United States which had just, after all, been attacked by a bunch of crazed Arabs.
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How the Gulf Oil Spill Live Feed Changed the Obama Presidency
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (19)By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
How did it all start going wrong for President Obama on the BP oil leak? He may have done some things right on the substance behind the scenes, but now the media narrative is getting overwhelmingly negative against him. My theory: it all began when Rep. Ed Markey, in a May 19 hearing with BP executives, asked that they put the live feed of the gusher on their website for everyone to see. That’s when the “optics” starting setting the tone. Having Americans watch “spillcam” for themselves changed everything. The live video stream of the leak quickly became one of the hottest searches on the Web, and cable news used it as filler during the daily chatfest. Here’s how Hank Stuever of the Washington Post described it:
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Romanoff, Sestak Job Offer "Bribes" Are Not Scandals
Tweet Share on Facebook June 3, 2010 Comment (8)By John Aloysius Farrell, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
You're a hotshot Wall Street trader, the best cowboy on the ranch, a power-hitting third baseman, or the fastest checkout clerk at the local supermarket. Word gets around. Somebody offers you a better job, a nicer shift, a richer contract, more perks. Your boss calls you in. "What will it take," she asks, "to make you stay?"
Call the FBI! Appoint a special counsel! Alert Fox News!
The all-American advantages of "leverage" have been re-defined, in this silliest of political seasons, as "bribery."
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Don't Lift the International Ban on Whaling
Tweet Share on Facebook June 2, 2010 Comment (18)By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
The International Whaling Commission (IWC) meets later this month in Morocco to consider lifting a long-standing ban on commercial whaling.
The idea sounds positively loony on its face (and it is). But the hope by some anti-whaling countries is that by allowing the three nations that slaughter whales commercially to whale commercially, they can save more whales by persuading those nations to whale in lower numbers. The argument against lifting the ban is that those three nations, Japan, Iceland and Norway, are not trustworthy anyway and won’t lower, but will actually increase, their slaughter of these intelligent mammals. -
Why Tom Campbell Should Win the California Republican Senate Primary
Tweet Share on Facebook June 2, 2010 Comment (4)By Scott Galupo, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
As a traditionalist on social issues, I tire pretty quickly of the media’s—and much of official Washington’s—never-ending quest for more fiscal conservatives with moderate social views. As my friend Ramesh Ponnuru often notes, social conservatives, especially evangelicals, are the GOP’s most dependable bloc of fiscal conservatives. And so-called moderate Republicans, like the fading Arlen Specter once was, are as likely to cross party lines on spending, not just on abortion.
But in coastal states like Massachusetts (see Brown, Scott) and California, flexibility on life issues and marriage, as a practical matter, is hard to quibble with. So it’s a bit troubling to read Jim Carlton’s report in the Wall Street Journal detailing Republican Senate candidate (and former House member) Tom Campbell’s apparent stall in Tuesday’s primary against Carly Fiorina and Chuck DeVore. (The winner gets to face Sen. Barbara Boxer in November.)
