President Obama is trying very hard to promote diplomacy as our primary, if not only, foreign policy. He is stretching out a hand to
*Note: the quote was edited for content, indicated by the “*…*”
President Obama is trying very hard to promote diplomacy as our primary, if not only, foreign policy. He is stretching out a hand to
*Note: the quote was edited for content, indicated by the “*…*”
The upcoming stress test of the financial industry was discussed by Ben Bernanke today. One thing he emphasized was regulators focusing on executive compensation in the banks. For banks that received bailout money, this is understandable, but he does not want to end here. Bernanke wants the government to stick its nose in these private banks and mandate their pay structure. He claims that it is to guard against payment policies that could have adverse effects on the banks long term health. But here is the beauty of capitalism, if this is the case, then these inferior institutions will fail, others will learn from the mistakes made, and create a new, smarter business to take its place. This is just another attempt to increase the size of government, with the assumption that government knows much more about how run a bank than the actual bankers, and the bankers who would take place of bankers who have proven themselves incompetent. Another disturbing proposal is to give the Treasury secretary the power to decide which troubled banks are to be fully taken over. Looking past the obvious irony that Bernanke thinks that the man who could not even figure out how to pay his personal taxes is qualified enough to decide which institutions are on the verge of failure and then be able to run them, this puts a political appointee in the president’s administration in the role of judge, jury, and executioner over private sector banks.
President Obama appeared on Jay Leno tonight, the first time a sitting president has gone on a talk show. Personally I don’t think that a sitting president should be going on a late night talk show, it seems like he is still in campaign mode. But something that caught my attention is a comment President Obama made during the show. I will admit that I have not seen the taping yet, but I have heard that the president made a joke which included the Special Olympics. Conservative commentators will undoubtedly, as I have already seen, try to make a big fuss about this. Their main argument, as far as I can tell, is that if former president Bush had said this he would have been crucified by the media. I believe this to be true, but as I think it would be unjust to crucify Bush if he had made this same comment, I in the same way think that it would be unjust to hold President Obama to this imaginary standard that conservatives think that Bush would be held to in the same situation, while thinking that Bush was mistreated by the media. Conservatives need to understand that the way in which liberals treated Bush the past 8 years is unacceptable, but the last thing they should do is treat Obama the exact way that liberals treated Bush. This takes away any sense of moral high ground, and the fantasy that they are offering something different to the American people (ie. Conservative principles) and makes them just as petty as the liberals they have been criticizing for the past 8 years.
The issue of marijuana is a difficult one for me. I am personally against all drugs including marijuana. That being said, I applaud Eric Holder and the Obama Administration in their new direction of the federal drug policy. Medical Marijuana has been passed by state law in
The AIG bailout-bonuses fiasco has sparked a lot of “outrage” from politicians. Now since these bonuses were contractually obligated before the bailout was given by these very same politicians who are now outraged, I don’t understand where they get the nerve to pretend like this actually upsets them. This is clearly just an attempt to take focus off the massive expansion of government, through bailouts, new and expanded government programs, and a 3.55 trillion dollar budget, and onto something that everyone can act like they are mad about. The facts of this case remain clear; congress approved a program that would give hundreds of billions of dollars to AIG, which had these bonuses contracted to its executives. In the words of the great Andy Levy, “what is the difference in AIG giving out these bonuses and Congress giving themselves a raise this year?” If anyone can answer this I will withdrawal my complaint.
All the facts of this case are not known. What is known is that these children were homeschooled by the mother, before the father, admittedly had an affair. Now I don’t know a lot about the intricacies of the court system, but I do know that courts generally side with the mother in domestic disputes, especially ones which are brought on by an affair by the husband. The children were thriving in the home school setting, achieving marks on their tests two years above their grade levels. This judge is ordering these children, against the will of the lady who has coached them to unusually high levels of achievement in academics, into the
The government should not force their views on education onto these children. Government officials stress the importance of [government controlled (public)] education, but if this is the best option, then they are admitting that nearly half of the students should not graduate from high school, and a large portion of those who do should be solidly below their grade level. This is another example of government rewarding incompetence and failure.