The last entry here is a ranking of the last 13 Presidents by somebody who lived through them all. A great deal of thought obviously went in to it, even if I do not agree with it all. What are your thoughts?
There is also a diatribe about the self-important that is, to me, a perfect analogy for modern-day Republicans. Look at it, and consider whether it can be easily turned into a useable frame.
This sort of editorial is a result fo the fantasy that oinions on both sides of an issue are always equally valid. If this guy really wanted to provide information hec ould ahve looked to the recent study in Florida showing how much MORE Florida pays subsidizing WalMart with Medicaid.
Is shopping at Wal-Mart immoral?
A recent article on msn.com posed this question: Is shopping at Wal-Mart immoral? According to the article, in the early 90s, business owners on the island of Kodiak, Alaska hired a consultant to analyze how a proposed Wal-Mart store would hurt them.
But the consultant gathering data for the group found how the store would actually help another local group - the poor.
Low-income people there wanted the Wal-Mart because they perceived the store's lower prices as a way to effectively lower their cost of living. ...
Should one shop at a store that has a detrimental effect on the local community? That would be an easy enough question to answer if it weren't so obviously more complex than it appears on the surface.
First, one must satisfactorily answer a tougher question: do Wal-Mart stores really have a detrimental effect on local communities?
Economists, notorious about being unable to agree on much of anything, continue to debate the issue. It really all comes down to personal perspective and choice.
I'll likely continue to shop at Wal-Mart and I doubt it will cause me to think of myself as immoral. Whether or not I should continue to eat at Hooters is another dilemma altogether.
Benton (Arkansas) Courier
All you need to do to figure out who the bad guys fear is to see who makes them vent their spleen the most. Yes, Dean's comments were explosive, and so were Hillary's. They were also true. And we should not be so nervous about it. Remember, we will NEVER move the fundamentalists. Our target is the "Reagan Democrats," the people that like smaller government and lower taxes, and DO NOT want the government in their bedroom or their church. Dean's hyperbole is perfectly tuned to their ears. As an aside, holding up Mehlman as the paragon of Republicanism is hysterical on multiple levels.
Hey, Howard: Them's fightin' words
Dean has called Republicans "evil," he said he "hated Republicans," they "never worked an honest day in their lives," and they are a "white Christian party." The last comment was news to Ken Mehlman, the GOP Party chairman, who said that those who attended his bar mitzvah should be informed that he heads a white Christian party. ...
Let's get one thing straight: Dean has never had to play nice with anyone. His political history consists of being the governor of a state where the only Republican of any stature switched his allegiance back in 2000. He knows only one speed - out of control. ...
Speaking of 2008, another presidential hopeful, this one with some experience in the White House, unleashed her own tirade against the other side. Hillary Clinton was speaking at a fund-raiser for her Senate campaign in 2006 when she noted that current Republicans were the worst abusers of power ever. With all the attention paid to the revelation of Deep Throat recently, it's funny that she couldn't remember Richard Nixon, the president she investigated as a young lawyer.
Clinton has been making all the appearances of someone jockeying for a presidential position. She has been friendly with the opposition. She has worked on legislation with Republicans, including the aforementioned Gingrich. She has backed the war in Iraq and moved towards the center on abortion issues. But she should realize that every comment she makes from now on will be heard by all, not just a room full of campaign backers. ...
Richard Duke is news editor of the Benton Courier.
Daily Breeze (Los Angeles, California)
They really believe just saying something makes it so. Hw else could you say Democrats could find nothing radical Brown said? How about her comments equating the New Deal with slavery?! And why is it inappropriate to consider commetns ABOUT THE LAW made in speeches? Anybody want to drop them a line? The link is at the end of the quote.
Democrats played politics with judicial nominee
Of course, Senate Democrats and their accomplices will never admit that. How politically correct would that be? So instead they tried to label Rogers Brown a "judicial extremist." But even that didn't hold up. Democrats couldn't come up with much that Rogers Brown had said or written from the bench that sounded extreme. So they were forced to improvise and play to the hilt things that Rogers Brown said off the bench in speeches. Suddenly, the issue was no longer the nominee's capabilities or her judicial temperament. Rather, it became her personal views on controversial issues like affirmative action, natural law and the role of government. ...
So what were Democrats really up to in opposing the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown?
The answer is obvious The Republican Party would get credit for putting another African-American on the federal bench, and black voters might begin to look more favorably at the GOP in future elections. Democrats act like they have a monopoly on enhancing racial diversity and promoting the professional advancement of Hispanics and African-Americans, and they are willing to fight tooth and nail to keep it.
That's the real reason Democrats fought so vociferously against the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown. In the end, they lost. And for that, the country should be thankful.
Gainesville (Florida) Sun
Gwinnett (Gwinnett County, Georgia) Daily Post
Am I the only one to notice that people with a W on their bumpers are far more likely to be selfish than people with Kerry/Edwards stickers? I hate to simplify to the point of stupidity, but it does seem like people's behavior in traffic magnifies whoever they are, and Republicans tend to be FAR more selfish than Democrats. And isn't the last paragraph really the best description of Democrats you've read in a while?
We get it; you're more important
Speaking of soccer leagues, you have a big soccer ball magnet on your car. You and your land yacht ran me off the road because you just had to pick up the dry cleaning before Missy and Cody and Dustin got through with soccer/band/karate. I'm just a poor lunch pail kind of a guy, trudging through my boring life. You have the right of way because, after all, you're important.
Speaking of your land yacht, you have a sticker with the name of your church and/or your university in the rear window. I'm sure that God and the University of Georgia are both very proud to be affiliated with the queen of suburbia. Every time you pull out in front of us and go 16 miles an hour while you dig for your phone, it runs through our mind that road rage is sometimes justified. But we swallow it because you're such an important person.
I'm not as full of hate and vitriol as it sounds. But the older I get, the more I realize that in the grand scheme of things we're like fleas stuck on the same dog. We're all subject to the whims of an infinite number of things that are out of our control. We'll all be here until we're brushed out of the grand scheme of things. So how did you arrive at the conclusion that the comfort, convenience and livelihood of you and those you live with have priority above and beyond mine?
Tim Freeman is a resident of Sugar Hill.
The Courier Press
We need to keep pounding this point home- Bush is the biggest spender EVER. This is how we win. See the comment above about "Reagan Democrats" and Dean's comments.
Of course, most experts believed that forecast was set way too high to begin with to exaggerate any progress on cutting the deficit. No other major forecast was over $400 billion, and the Congressional Budget Office pegged it at $394 billion.
The White House won't say how much is "well below" until its next scheduled estimate in July, but the CBO and other analysts now say the deficit will be around $350 billion. The idea that a $350 billion deficit is somehow good news would have been inconceivable just four years ago, when the budget was in surplus. ...
White House budget director Joshua Bolten offered another reason for the less-than-expected shortfall: President Bush's "focus on spending discipline."
That should provoke a few chuckles over at the economically conservative Cato Institute, which noted in a report last month that total government spending grew 33 percent in Bush's first term, making him, even in inflation-adjusted dollars, the biggest spender since Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. ...
The president may make good on his promise to cut the deficit in half over five years, although as a percentage of GDP, not in actual dollars. But after that the deficit will explode because federal spending is fated to explode, thanks to mandated spending on entitlements such as Medicare, Medicaid, prescription drugs and Social Security. Federal spending, as a percentage of GDP, will go from around 20 percent today to 50 percent in the 2040s.
The situation was aptly summed up by CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who told The Wall Street Journal, "These are the good ol' days. These are the best of times. After this, it gets worse."
The Gleaner
With age comes perspecgive, if not automatically wisdom. The opinion of somebody who has been around since the Hoover Administration is worth listening to. I would rate FDR over Ike, but the writer gave Ike points for service in WWII. What do you think of his reasoning? How would you rank them? You can follow the link for the rest. Six through eleven are Ford, Reagan, Carter, Bush (I), Nixon, and Hoover.
Current president worst in lifetime
No. 1 is Dwight David Eisenhower. He was supreme commander of Allied forces in Europe in World War II and president over perhaps the only period of normalcy in my lifetime.
No. 2 is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He came along when America needed him. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was enactment of Social Security. He also may have been able to prevent our fleet being caught in Pearl Harbor.
No. 3 is Bill Clinton. He presided over, perhaps, the greatest economic boom in our history, balanced the budget and left office with a projected surplus (all gone now).
No. 4 is John F. Kennedy. Although cut short (he would have served two terms) he showed signs of greatness.
No. 5 is Harry Truman. He had the courage to use the A-bomb and its use saved as many as a million or more lives. His biggest mistakes were involving us in the Korean War and firing General Douglas McArthur. ...
That leaves Lyndon B. Johnson and George Bush No. 2. Both men involved us in wars we should have never been or presently be in. Both misled the country as to the reason to be in the wars. Johnson used the Tonkin Gulf incident (which never happened) to greatly escalate the war in Vietnam. Bush No. 2 used weapons of mass destruction, which Iraq had none, to involve us in a war he should have never started.
I put Johnson at No. 12 since he did preside over the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Bush No. 2 is dead last -- the worst in my lifetime, since I cannot think of one good thing he has done -- that is unless you want to call the Iraq War a good thing.
I call it a disastrous mistake which Americans will be paying for for the next 100 or so years -- in money and ill will.
A.J. Vogel
Henderson
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