Robert Burns, poet of the downtrodden, once considered moving to the West Indies to be a plantation overseer (of slaves) and later worked as an exciseman, a job much condemned as oppressive of the poor. Joe Phelan comments: The negotiation of such contradictions is one of the severest tests imposed on the working-class writer. The near-miss on [...]
Monthly Archives: January 2009
Cardinalatial fraud in L.A.?
A d.a. has a new stick with which to beat a cardinal: The U.S. attorney in Los Angeles has launched a federal grand jury investigation into Cardinal Roger M. Mahony in connection with his response to the alleged molestation of children by priests in the Los Angeles Archdiocese, according to two law enforcement sources familiar [...]
Birds of a feather
We compare, you decide. The month’s Wed. Journal column is about O. and FDR as peas in a pod. It’s a shame our first black president is a liberal. He appoints a few center-leaners here and there but has very crazy people at EPA and Labor, to name two Cabinet posts. . . . . [...]
Catholics once came to the rescue
To market, to market, to save us all: * WSJ today, p-1, has “Price cuts spur home sales.” Biggest monthly gain in almost seven years. What? Market correcting itself? It does that? Not for those whose mantra is market-bad-government-good. Holy Mother the State we believe in, not in any stinkin’ market!!!! * Cardinal Cajetan, Dominican, [...]
Requiem for an industry
A book you all might want to own. From the day Barack Obama announced his candidacy to the moment he took the oath of office, the mainstream media fawned over him like love-struck school girls. Even worse, this time they went beyond media bias to media activism, says CBS veteran and #1 bestselling author Bernard [...]
The nation’s orator
Here we go with the inaugural address, spotlighting passages that are overwritten: Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath. The words have been spoken during rising tides of prosperity and the still waters of peace. Come on. This is schoolboy stuff. So is this: Yet, every so often the oath is taken amidst gathering [...]
Something there is that doesn’t like an inauguration
For a thoughtful assessment, this commentary got off to a fatuous start? I think so. Obama’s inauguration was just the kind of event that might inspire genuine poetry: it was that rare moment when the public intersected with the private for good instead of evil. It’s about the dumbbell poem read at the grand event [...]
Depends what you intend to shovel
In Connecticut “shovel-ready” is drastically in need of clarification. The stimulus package is intended to provide new money for projects, not replace existing funding. That creates another problem, local leaders said. Any project within 90 to 120 days of starting – the common definition of shovel-ready – would already be permitted and into the bid [...]
They be smitten
Tom Roeser disagrees with Charles Krauthammer, whom he rates highly, in the matter of Obama’s being blamed if the economy continues bad. I don’t believe [it] for a moment. Amity Shlaes shows how the FDR’s wild experimentation convinced the voters that at least he was trying. The compliant, supine media will be in Obama’s corner throughout [...]
Hope-a, hope-a, rope-a, dope!
Will the stimulus work? New York University economics professor Thomas Sargent: The calculations that I have seen supporting the stimulus package are back-of-the-envelope ones that ignore what we have learned in the last 60 years of macroeconomic research. Back of the envelope worked for Lincoln on his way to Gettysburg (Bob Newhart told us so), [...]
