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Editorial Page. Dedicated to The 1st Amendment. Whereby:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Expect to see on this page: Great diversity of viewpoints and conviction. By linking to sites, the author does not necessarily agree with opinions, viewpoints, or convictions expressed thereon. No polemics here! Outside the limits of a formal debate, all arguments of a political nature are a waste of time and a source not of enlightenment but of ill feeling!!!

What determines whether someone is a conservative or liberal? In reading the plethora of editorials and blogs available on the internet, it seems that the following litmus tests obtain: If you support the current administration, you are a conservative. If, for any reason, you criticize any of the its policies or strategies domestically or in Iraq or Afghanistan, you are a liberal and unpatriotic as well. I don't buy that argument!       

This Author is a Basic Conservative as he embraces the following tenets:
   Strict Construction of The Constitution!
   Law and Order!
   Family Values!
   Patriotism!      Real Patriots Pay Their Share of Taxes!!! Read how some CEO's go offshore to avoid!!!
   Fiscal Conservatism: Real conservatives don't care for pork politics and subsidies. See Below on Big Sugar!
Are you ready for this? True conservatives would support Senator John Kerry in his bid for the White House. Kerry is a fiscal conservative who questions where the money is coming from to support most legislation, including the War in Iraq. The Bush Campaign accuses him of flip-flopping. How else to explain their cynical support for the neo-conservatives' adventure, which has bled the Treasury dry while incompetently squandering the lives of young Americans in a needless imperial campaign. The Republican Administration should have kept their eyes on the ball and concentrated on the hunt for BinLaden in Afghanistan and its border area with Pakistan. A true conservative does things in a measured manner, exploring carefully ALL options and advocates the use of force only as a last resort.

To me, a liberal can also embrace Law and Order, Patriotism, and Family Values, yet subscribe to a liberal construction of the U.S. Constitution. I will listen to any viewpoint that is rationale, including a liberal viewpoint! The most dangerous kind of conservative is the person who says that he is a conservative and whatever he believes in is conservativism and opposing viewpoints are, therefore, liberal.  Too many of my colleagues are this type of conservative! "Political conservatism is the resistance to change and a greater tolerance for inequality relative to liberals." Following is a discussion of various political persuasions:  (Actually, I'd Rather Be Sailing!!!)

In my opinion, a huge problem confronting our country are citizens who frame themselves as conservatives, when, in fact, they are a combination of jingoist and xenophobic, even Islamophobic.

Politicians generally like a constitutional discussion because it allows them a way to avoid controversial topics by reframing them in terms of the two organizing principles of our system of government: separation of powers and federalism.

Separation of Powers: A concept enshrined in the Constitution. American governments have three branches — legislative, executive and judicial. The legislative branch is charged with making laws, the executive with enforcing them, and the judiciary with interpreting them.

Judicial Activism: The Republican Party resorted to it when it petitioned the Supreme Court to throw out the Florida Supreme Court call for a recount. The Supreme Court 5-4 decision agreed with the Republicans on the basis that a recount violated George W. Bush's right to equal protection under the 14th Amendment, notwithstanding that amendment's intended  applicability expressly to newly freed slaves when it was drafted after the Civil War. Thus we have the most ultra liberal decision ever made by the U.S. Supreme court, or any court for that matter! Justice Rehnquist and his majority opined that the interpretation was "limited to the present circumstances," words that suggest a raw exercise of power, not legal analysis. In my opinion, Roe vs Wade is a blatant example of judicial activism!

Consult Wikopedia for more in-depth discussions of Conservatism or Liberalism.

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then … we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

- John F. Kennedy, September 14, 1960
 

A picture is worth a thousand words as it this graph from The Center On Budget and Policy Priorities:

     Paul Krugman    

Did you know: we can have a market economy, even a free market, without capitalism?

According to Paul Krugman, Piketty's /Capital in the 21'st Century/ demolishes the myth of meritocracy. In Piketty's words, "...capitalism automatically generates arbitrary and unsustainable inequalities that radically undermine the meritocratic values on which democratic societies are based." Simply put, there is no mechanism built into capital markets to prevent oligarchy. Those who inherit enough capital assets can 'make their money work for them' with returns that exceed economic growth. This means capitalism, left to its own devices, will always reward the monied with an increasingly disproportionate share of aggregate wealth, making the wealthy 'too big to jail' in a death spiral for democracy.

Therefore, presuming we prefer liberty to oligarchy and don't want to be ruled by a collection of Paris Hiltons, Piketty concludes we must continuously redistribute wealth through global progressive/Social Democratic tax and market reforms. If that's something we can slip past the oligarchs, there's no denying it would work to lower inequality -at least until someone finds a way to game the system again.

However, progressive taxation is not the only democratic option on the table. Economist Richard Wolff describes market socialism:
"It means that the workers whose labor generates a surplus (an excess above what the workers themselves get back out of their output for their own consumption) are also identically the collective of persons who receive and distribute that surplus. Socialism is the negation of exploitation where exploitation is defined as an organization of production in which the people who receive and distribute the surplus are different from those who produce it. Examples of exploitative organizations of production include slavery (masters exploit slaves), feudalism (lords exploit serfs) and capitalism (employers exploit employees). If production were transformed from a capitalist to a socialist form - and exploitation were thereby eliminated from society the way slavery and serfdom were earlier - that would leave open the question of how society would distribute resources among productive enterprises and likewise how society would distribute the outputs of those enterprises. This could be done by markets, state planning, planning by other social institutions, and so on in an endless array of combinations. Markets have co-existed with every other kind of organization of production (e,g, slavery, feudalism etc.) and the same is true of planning."
So the difference between a socialist market and a capitalist market is who ultimately gets to own/control the capital: trust-fund babies, or the workers using it to produce.

In fact, we can even have free-market socialism, as this free e-book details: http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/Markets-Not-Capitalism-2011-Chartier-and-Johnson.pdf

Unless someone can prove Piketty et al. wrong and demonstrate that unchecked capitalism will defy nature and reduce inequality: progressive taxation or socialism seem to me the only viable answers to a system which produces oligarchs who are 'too big to jail'.

--Nathan 

   
   "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad, because it's going to put up a fight."
    The captions below the following photo of President Obama are irrational, inflamatory, and islamaphobic . Read the best-selling book The Post American World, by Fareed Zakaria and the reviews at the bottom. Then decide for yourself!!!

 Janet Reno: A good and decent Public Servant! One of the most respected Attorneys General in recent history. She enforced the law without prejudice.

Washington Post Synopsis of the Clinton Years DistinguishedWomen.com
Tough, meticulous, principled, idealistic and stubborn.
National Woman's Hall of Fame  Example of Law Enforcement and Family Values
America loves Janet Reno

President Reagan's Heritage

Delightful Movie: "Senator Rumson and Dan Christopher have accused me of being a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Well, for the record, I am indeed a member of the ACLU. But the big question is Why aren't you Bob and Dan? After all, here is an organization whose sole mission is to protect our Bill of Rights!"

"America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship. You've got to want it bad, because it's going to put up a fight."

"The symbol of your country cannot just be a flag. The symbol also has to be one of its citizens exercising his right to burn that flag in protest. Now show me that, defend that, celebrate that in your classrooms. Then you can stand up and sing about the land of the free."

"You want free speech? Let's see you acknowledge a man whose words make your blood boil who is standing center stage advocating at the top of his lungs that which you would spend a lifetime opposing at the top of yours."
 

 Visit the ACU Web Site and find out what Conservativism is all about!
 

 The Internet's leading journal on Federalism and the Founders.   The Conservative E-Journal of Record!
 

Read and believe what you want.

All About Neoconservatives (Neocons)
The Neoconservative Hall of Fame
Neoconservatism:  Committed to cultural traditionalism, democratic capitalism, and a foreign policy promoting freedom and American interests around the world.  WSJ:  What the Heck Is a 'Neocon'?
 An Opposing View   A Canadian Viewpoint
NeoConservatives and their blueprint for U.S. Power
Are you a neoconservative?
Project for the New American Century  Remembering the Neocons                  
Today Iraq, Tomorrow Iran

Max Boot, Olin Senior Fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and a former editor for the Wall Street Journal and the Christian Science Monitor. Boot is a regular contributor to numerous press outlets -- including The New York Times, Los Angeles times, USA Today, and the Washington Post -- and the author of several books, including The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (Basic Books), 2002, and Out of Order: Arrogance, Corruption and Incompetence on the Bench (Basic Books), 1998. Rethinking the Iwo Jima Myth
 Why the (iraqui insurgent) Rebels Will Lose

  Victor Davis Hanson Contributes to the National Review and the American Enterprise

Our Not-So-Wise Experts
 

 
"StrategyPage gives you rapid access to military news. We report these events as history, not headlines, and provide concise, comprehensive and easy-to-understand descriptions of the troops, their equipment and why wars the world over are being fought."

John Bolton: Appointed U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in March 2005. Bolton, an arms control expert with very little patience for multilateral niceties, is a leader of the administration's neoconservative hawks, who have been openly scornful of the United Nations.
His latest remarks about the UN: "As you know, I have over the years written critically about the U.N…. I have consistently stressed in my writings that American leadership is critical to the success of the U.N., an effective U.N., one that is true to the original intent of its charter's framers."  Who Is John Bolton?

 

 America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order
by Jonathan Clarke and Stefan Halper
 

An End To Evil: How To Win The War On Terror
 by David Frum and Richard Perle

Media Watch Sites:  campaigndesk.org, mediamatters.org and dailyhowler.com   c-span.org

Best of The Web Today: James Taranto from the Opinion Journal of WSJ.Com.
JamesTaranto.Com:  Collection of articles from the pages of The Wall Street Journal (and elsewhere).
Jejune Journalism:  Opposing Viewpoint!  OpinonJournal's Presidential Ratings
Core Principles for a Free Iraq by Donald Rumsfeld (requires registration with WSJ)
"Saddam's capture was a necessary step, arguably the most important step, toward final victory in Iraq."
Non Sequitur: " No one, least of all liberals themselves, thinks liberals are serious about either patriotism or religion." Who are these liberals that he is referring to?
 

 Sean Hannity of Fox News Hannity & Colmes Show.
 Sean is rated the number two talk show host after Rush Limbaugh!
 Sean doesn't believe in ad hominem attacks. That's why he always begin his arguments by calling his adversary a liberal! Americans should be very proud of this true patriot! 
 Fair and Balanced? Outfoxed!  MoveOn.Org  MediaMatters.Org  Doonesbury.Com  Ted Turner on Fox

  Bill O'Reilly: The mouthpiece of manly conservatism

 The official Web site for the books of Al Franken

 The O'Franken Factor Fair and Balanced Fan Page

News Hounds We watch FOX so you don't have to.

    Salon Interview Quotations     

Sweet Jesus, I hate Bill O'Reilly, International

 Three Little Words: Fox News Sues

 Charles Krauthammer won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary in 1987. His column generally appears on Fridays.   Our Instant Experts
 

Newsweek's Eleanor Clift

Iraq's Unintended Consequences

Arianna Online:  Crusade with Arianna Huffington!    
        Pigs At The Trough! How Corporate Greed and Political Corruption are undermining America!!!
Six Things John Kerry Needs To Do To Win In November
Fanatics & Fools: The Game Plan for Winning Back America
The Huffington Post Arianna's Blog Seeing the world in terms of right vs left is utterly obsolete

"I'm borderline-obsessed with the mainstream media's insistence on looking at the world through the obsolete right vs left paradigm while refusing to accept the ongoing political realignment on a wide variety of issues including Iraq, corporate greed, pork barrel spending, the failure of the drug war, and -- most recently -- the ludicrousness of the Dubai ports deal."

   WorkingForChange.Com
 

Lou: You the Man!!!  "Lou Dobbs, the nation's preeminent business news journalist, reports on the most pressing developments in domestic and international business news, government policy, Wall Street, corporate crime, science, education and technology."

 Los Angeles Times Op-Ed's   The End of Faith

New York Times Columnist Thomas L. Friedman, Three-time Winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
  Moderated Forum.  Suggests the right man for UN may be G.H.W.  Bush or Clinton!
 Origin of Species. "..two basic responses to globalization: Infosys and Al Qaeda."
 Hijacking Democratic Elections:  No Vote for Al Qaeda
 Awaking to a Dream: I want to wake up and read that John Kerry just asked John McCain to be his vice president, because if Mr. Kerry wins he intends not to waste his four years avoiding America's hardest problems — health care, deficits, energy, education — but to tackle them, and that can only be done with a bipartisan spirit and bipartisan team.
 Are There Any Iraqis in Iraq? Read Irshad Manji's courageous book "The Trouble With Islam Today," and the letters and debates from young Muslims on her Web site www.muslim-refusenik.com.

 New York Times Columnist Nicholas D. Kristof
 When Rapists Go Free! Inspiring Story of Mukhtar Mai!
 

 New York Times Columnist William Safire       New York Times Columnist David Brooks

  Missing Links Found  The Cruelest Month                                                          Al Qaeda’s Wish List
  Scandal at the U.N. (Iraqui Food-For-Oil) Creeping Democracy

Fly the Partisan Skies: One for Liberals, another for Conservatives!

One Nation, Enriched by Biblical Wisdom

The Uncertainty Factor   Take a Deep Breath

                                                                                        Crisis of Confidence  www.thepublicinterest.com

 New York Times Columnist Paul Krugman       New York Times Columnist Bob Herbert
   A Touch Of Class January 2003                                         The Other America
  Lifting the Shroud: Maybe he just wanted the public to know the truth.
 This Isn't America: "George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power."  Unofficial Paul Krugman Archive
 To Tell the Truth:  Character flaws and misplaced patriotism!
A Speech That's No Joke Al Gore 

"The real world is President Bush's Achilles' heel. He can't keep his distance from it forever."

What we really have is a looming crisis in the General Fund. Social Security, with
its own dedicated tax, has been run responsibly; the rest of the government has
not. So why are we talking about a Social Security crisis? Read Paul Krugman's Confusions about Social Security
 

 Rigged  Voting Machines by David Pogue
 Fighting 'The Big One'    "We may fail because to win The Big One, we need an American public, and allies, ready to pay any price and bear any burden, but we have a president unable or unwilling to summon either."

 Florida as the Next Florida:  "Four years after Florida made a mockery of American elections, there is every reason to believe it could happen again." New York Times Editorial.

YaleGlobal Online: A publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization which is devoted to examining the impact of our increasingly integrated world on individuals, communities, and nations. Latest deliberations are on The Causes and Consequences of the Collapse of the Cancun Global Trade Talks. See Connect the Dots by Thomas L. Friedman!

Intellectual Conservativism: The only site on the web devoted exclusively to intellectual conservatism.
CrossWalk.Com: Christian Conservative WebSite

Conservative Web Logs (Blogs):  Law Professor Glen Reynolds is shown at left.  
Instapundit.com  GlenReynolds.Com RedState.Org ConfirmThem.Com DailyPundit.Com    JurisPundit.Com     Southerner.net  Outside The Beltway 

Progressive Web Logs (Blogs):
     MoveOn.Org  The Huffington Post

Informed Comment by Professor Juan Cole      BagNewsNotes
  Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion  

Syndicated Columnist Cal Thomas  Article Archives on Townhall.Com
On California's New Sexual Education  Commentary...
Host of After Hours with Cal Thomas on Fox News Channel.

 

Paul Johnson: From the evil empire to the empire for liberty!        
 Margaret Thatcher   Why West Is Best  About   About #2  Related Writers
 Historian Paul Johnson on American Liberty.
 Relentlessly and Thoroughly: The only way to respond!
 A farewell to the intellectuals  Article in Al-Ahram Weekly.
 A History of the American People by Paul Johnson. Review of Book.
 The above is one of several classics by Non-Americans that describe our government and history. Two others are:  Democracy In America by DeTocqueville and An American Dilemma by Gunnar Myrdal.
 

The Objectivist Center (TOC) The Daily Objectivist What is Objectivism?

New York Times Columnist Maureen Dowd. Darling of the NeoCons!
 In commenting on Paul Wolfowitz's report on his trip to Iraq: "As we would drive by, little kids would run up to the road and give us a thumbs up sign," he said. (At least he thought it was the thumb.)
Read her review of The Passion of The Christ!  "I went with a Jewish pal, who tried to stay sanguine. "The Jews may have killed Jesus," he said. "But they also gave us `Easter Parade.' ""
Quid Pro Quack Truth as a Weapon  Charlie McCarthy Hearings  BushWorld
Head Spook Sputters "If only Osama had faxed an X-marks-the-spot map to the Crawford ranch showing the Pentagon, the Capitol, the twin towers and the word "BOOM!" scrawled in Arabic."

Los Angeles Times Columnist Ronald Brownstein: Washington Outlook

Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go
 

 Chicago SunTimes Columnist Andrew Greeley

Zakeed Zakaria was named editor of Newsweek International in October 2000.
 The Future of Freedom: "In his brave and ambitious book, Fareed Zakaria has updated Tocqueville. ... it deserves a wide readership."   — Niall Ferguson, New York Times Book Review.
Before Iraq can be a democracy and hold elections(hardware), it must build and put in place the infrastructure of democracy, or software. These institutions of liberty, comprising 90% of the process on the road to a free society, are as follows: 1.  A Functioning Judicial System, 2. A Free Press, 3. Free Speech, 4. Economic Reform, 5. Civic Institutions, and Multiple Political Parties. 
The Smoking Gun:    No Security, No Democracy
 

The Race For The White House   

GeorgeSoros.Com
Soros.Org

Schwarzenegger,Com     Master Politician

Foreign Policy: Portal to Global Politics, Economics, and Ideas!
AFJI:          Armed Forces Journal International.
CJR:          Columbia Journalism Review.
MSNBC:    Opinions.
CNN:         In-Depth Specials.
Eagle Forum:  Leading the Pro-Family Movement since 1972. President: Phyllis Schlafly.

YaleGlobal Online: A publication of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization which is devoted to examining the impact of our increasingly integrated world on individuals, communities, and nations. Latest deliberations are on The Causes and Consequences of the Collapse of the Cancun Global Trade Talks. See Connect the Dots by Thomas L. Friedman!

Executive Order 9981: 50th Anniversary of the Desegregation of the Armed Services!
ACLU:        Florida's ACLU 1998-1999 Legal Docket
Hackworth:  Defending America with Colonel David W. Hackworth: Soldier, Author, Columnist.
NATO:     Updates on the crisis in Kosovo.
Poland:   The Polish American Congress (NATO)!
Croatia:   Dobrodosli Croatian Web Central!
FRY:          Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Official Web site.
QIK:         Pro-Kosovo Independence Page.
Beograd:  Supports Yugoslavia conflict against NATO. 
Korea:  The Forgotten War 1950-1953 St.Petersburg Times Special

Have You Forgotten!
Snopes.Com: Urban Legends Reference Pages: Hoaxes, Scams, Bum Dope, etc.
Ad-Aware: Use This after Urban Legends to get rid of all resultant adware!

Rep. Dan Miller: Fought to reform the Federal Sugar Program. Win this battle and the Sugar
Barons won't be able to buy politicians. (Too bad Dan Miller had to retire and be replaced by a puppet!)

Everglades in Peril (New York Times): "The most ambitious environmental rescue operation ever tried in this country — a $7.8 billion plan to restore the Everglades — is suddenly at risk. The reason is that one of the major players in the enterprise, Florida's politically connected sugar cane industry, wants to postpone into the distant future the deadline for cleaning up the polluted water flowing into the Everglades. And the Florida Legislature is poised to let the industry do it. This could mean serious trouble for an already fragile ecosystem. It would also violate the spirit of the federal-state partnership underlying the project and threaten the revenue stream on which it depends."
  Everglades Restoration   Everglades Betrayal: St. Petersburg Times Editorial
 Everglades Forever:   The Everglades are more than a state possession. They're certainly more than a sugar-industry repository for phosphorus runoff, or virgin territory for developers, or a plaything for politicians.
 Miami Herald:  Everglades pollution bill alarms U.S. judge.
 Sugar Industry Smarts Over Florida Everglades Cleanup
Judge Hoeveler: Shown at right, wants the
 State and Sugar Industry to live up to their
 agreement.
Judge under attack from Big   Sugar! 
The Politics of Sugar!
Big Sugar Wins!!!  23 September 2003!
Judge William Hoeveler disqualified from presiding over Everglades clean-up case
 Why was it ever necessary to start growing sugar in Florida in the first place? If sugar is in such short supply why does the government subsidize the sugar industry?
EVERGLADES DESTRUCTION - "The Everglades Whenever Act"
Jeb Bush signs Everglades bill, then asked the Legislature to change it!
Federal Sugar Subsidy Helps Destroy Florida Everglades
Politics and the Everglades:  The $8 billion plan to restore Florida's threatened Everglades is at a critical point. President Bush's personal intervention could keep the project from veering off course.
America's Sugar Daddies: Read about the first family of corporate welfare! 
ACCELER8 EVERGLADES NOW!    Everglades project hits federal snag
 

 Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill Declares: 'If People Don't Like What I'm Doing, I Don't Give a Damn -- I Could Be Sailing around on a Yacht or Driving around the Country'

With the stock market plunging and Americans "increasingly worried about the way the Bush administration is dealing with the economy and corporate fraud, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, the administration's main voice on economic issues, was in Kyrgyzstan. [This reinforced the view] that...Bush's economic team was not responding sufficiently to growing economic and political pressures. 'I'm constantly amazed that anybody cares what I do,' Mr O'Neill declared...Mr O'Neill takes issue with the notion that he is AWOL...in May, Mr O'Neill bridled at questions about his effectiveness. 'If people don't like what I'm doing, I don't give a damn,' he asserted. 'I could be sailing around on a yacht or driving around the country.' He added that the president [sic] had praised him for his original way of thinking. 'As long as he gives me that leash, I'm going to use it,' Mr O'Neill said. [Mitch Daniels said that Washington] should not overestimate its importance in the financial market!
s."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/21/politics/21ECON.html


To Regain Confidence -- Robert Rubin writes: "There has been much confusion and uncertainty among investors and in Washington about the economy and the stock market, and about what to do in response to a seemingly significant loss of confidence in our system. Much of the focus has been on accounting and corporate governance. These issues are important, but I think the restoration of confidence and the establishment of sound fundamentals going forward require a much broader focus." Yo Paul -- are you listening, Yachtboy?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35086-2002Jul19.html

 Little Green Footballs
Anti-Idiotarian Links: WebLogs.

 

Cuba: Standby for editorials on how the U.S. should deal with the Cuba Issue in consonance with the problem of global terrorism. Doing the right thing is easy. Knowing what is the right thing is what is hard!!!
  Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba: (AHTC)  Co-President Sam Gibbons.
  Cuban Policy Foundation: (CPF), Advocates the end of the blockade, indicated that 68% of U.S. citizens believe that obstacles on travel to Cuba should end. Sally Grooms Cowal, president.
 

 Satire
Play nice, now: Did I really mean to say all those ungracious things about Lizzie Grubman, Allen Iverson, Bernie Ebbers et al? By Michael Kelly
 

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