Is it too much to ask of Congress to support its Head Start B.A. bill with some funds for state implementation of higher salaries above the current average of $21,000 and issuing tuition incentives to obtain the BA? Does not this low salary make a mockery of the efforts to leave no child behind? Is it too much to ask for the end of vouchers based on the age-old premise that exclusive private schools are superior to public schools when in fact the premise is based on segregation in behalf ...
However, bad news took a back seat to "I like Ike" and the sensation created by Levitt's '50 model that came equipped with a giant 12½" TV. Stalin graciously obliged this good feeling by croaking. This bustling decade of the 50s—the "police action" in Korea; McCarthyism at home and Puerto Rican extremists firing on Congress notwithstanding—was led by consumerism. Music before Elvis was the sweetest and softest ever. Such names as Hugo Winterhalter, Mantovani, June Hutton, and Andy Williams...
In 1939 a rookie Yankee outfielder known as "King Kong" Keller sported # 9—yes, Maris' retired digit—and tore up the league. He was my boyhood idol, even though the "Yankee Clipper" hogged the headlines. Ah, '39, glorious, magical—never mind the open terrorism against Jews by the German people in '38, ignore France, England and the United States' cowering indifference to Hitler's power grab of Austria, Czechoslovakia and the march on Poland—for, yes, the Trylon and Perisphere were the symbol ...
Once the primaries are over, the political campaign I’m looking forward to is the challenger who is set on rebuilding all socio-political, and diplomatic-war fronts. If Clinton is correct that it is better to be wrong and strong then it follows that is better to be right and stronger across the entire political spectrum. Above all, the challenger should not give a litany of social programs that are little more than sound bites. The public does not want to hear about prescription drugs, soc...
Can one be against there being a state of Israel and not be anti-Semitic as a separatist in this nation not be anti-religious? The answer is yes, but with explanation. Though many construe atheism and humanism as catalysts for separation of church and state, there are many theists who believe in it too: even though God is immanent in the world does not mean that he governs every nook and cranny of human endeavor. School prayer, for instance, is unconstitutional not because the US is against...
Wesley Clark’s tax plan bothers me — not the rolling back the windfalls for the super rich — when he proclaims that families of four with incomes of $50,000 and under will pay no taxes and every family earning beyond to $100,000 will receive a $2250 tax credit per child. This proposal only aggravates the animosity of those in favor of the Bush status quo favoring the rich but tossing peanuts to the unwashed. In one sense Bush is right on lowering the tax rate on the poor to 10%, which is what it...
It does not take a bleeding heart Massachusetts' liberal to perceive that the greatest defense a nation has is in its health and enlightenment. To cast a shadow over millions of its citizens in fear of not only its health but of the economic disaster for their loved ones is monstrous. To abandon the severely addictive and the mortally inflicted is callousness unbefitting a government of good will, and in callous economic terms more costly even in the short run. Insurance, not just medical, sho...
Great sighs of relief wafted across the audience from the other candidates when Brokaw asked Sharpton about the confederate flag still on state property, even though the interim solution in effect removed it from prominence. Al was blunt about it; it’s an insult and should be removed permanently even from private property. Only Kucinich offered he was not staying over night in South Carolina because of it and it was great that he was peeved and stated that it was time to get over divisiveness ...
We all had it wrong, says Kay. So what? It matters little since the intent was never to scrape up WMD from Saddam’s junk pile left behind by the original weapons inspectors. The Rove plan was to perpetuate the highly successful perception of a wartime president — he learned that from FDR. Everybody loves a commander-in-chief who kicks ass, the hell with the presidency of peace. The nation is supposed to accept the inevitability of lousy Intelligence, despite the billions of dollars poured i...
Wardell at one time believed that the internet was the alternative toward mainstream commentators and columnists who were not satisfactory to his way of thinking. Now he claims it is “destroying the civility of political discourse.” Only he and his small circle of friends have “ views based on a set of honest, well thought-out principles.” I wonder if his mention of internet includes JoeUser bloggers that are not suitable to his high criteria for civility and debates, which he has relegated to...
Euthanasia defies reality. Some people and sects actually believe that not only is suffering inevitable but it is necessary just as others question that without evil can there really be good or what does health mean if there be no sickness? I suspect a further argument would be thankfulness for brutes like Saddam; for what value would democracy carry without its counterpart? Yet is not a preemptive strike upon such butchery in a sense a denial of euthanasia by putting an end to the suffering...
Dorothy Canfield once said: “There just aren’t enough folks with sense to go around.” This was justification for her complaint of corruptive inefficiency and indolence that plagued all walks of life putting undue pressure on the small minority gifted with efficiency and diligence to supply the needs and comforts of the majority. The birth in a sense of supply-side economics. For it is only the entrepreneurs of good sense that are capable of creating demand from the hapless masses gullible an...
The New Hampshire debate demonstrated several aspects. First, that Sharpton is sharp, except in the realm of the Federal Reserve — but who is? — and that he obviously was deliberately targeted with the unfair question with the aim to embarrass the black candidate. More important was Edwards’ protest that the reporters’ questioning — gay marriage as an example — did not evoke the real issues confronting the nation. After all, there is a war going on and hardly the time to introduce a frivo...
Kerry’s surprising victory could be bad news for Bush because the anti-war people, perceiving the de facto war of choice, have modified their stand that it is best to elect one who thirty years ago as a veteran led the anti-war movement. They reasoned that who but a veteran, having experienced the heartbreak of a war predicated on disinformation qualifies to lead the nation back to sanity? Iowans finally realized that Kerry’s senate vote for the war — just as I had expressed in previous b...
The word terror was first introduced to the lexicon [“reign of terror”] during the French Revolution, since the beginning of time it was called massacre of mostly innocents — now labeled genocide —and usually in retaliation from other nations or from internal strife. Now only the names have changed, such as IRA, Zionists, al Qaeda, Baathist, PLO, FARC, the left and right in Italy two decades ago. At one time some were considered freedom fighters. To assist in distinguishing guerilla warfar...