Blogs for 2006 - Road to the Middle Class

WE DON’T USUALLY do David Broder here at the Road to the Middle Class, for obvious reasons. But today he writes about the Democrats latest attempt to game the presidential primary calendar.

Call me conservative, but when I came to the United States I quickly grew to love the primary season and its calendar.

It started slow with the New Hampshire primary and slowly gathered steam until the Oregon primary and then the granddaddy of them unfold

Costco vs. Wal-Mart

by Christopher Chantrill

SOME OF YOU may have noticed that the two big box retailing champs, Wal-Mart and Costco, have differing political profiles. The Wal-Mart and the Walton family are associated with the Republican Party and union busting, while Costco and CEO Jim Sinegal are associated with the Democrats and are much more employee-friendly. Here is an ABC News puff-piece on Costco and Sinegal.

In fact there is a big difference in worker pay. Costco pays about $17 per hour and Wal-Mart pays unfold

Suppose Omar Was Bombing Abortion Clinics...

by Christopher Chantrill

THE MSM REACTION to the San Francisco hit-and-run motorist yesterday was Ho Hum. No need to put Afghan driver Omeed Aziz Popal on the front page with his car in front of the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco.

It’s like the Seattle gunman a few weeks ago. Nothing to report there really. Anyway, the South Asian suspect Naveed Afzal Haq supposedly converted to Christianity lately.

Then there was the North Carolina chappie, discussed by unfold

Things You Are Not Allowed To Say: Part XXXIX

by Christopher Chantrill

NEARLY SIXTY years ago, feminist Simone de Beauvoir bemoaned that the female was the victim of the species. What she wanted was to become a real human being, with a life of the mind, creating, reading, and writing.

Don’t, advises Michael Noer in Forbes, marry a woman like that.

Guys: a word of advice. Marry pretty women or ugly ones. Short ones or tall ones. Blondes or brunettes. Just, whatever you do, don't marry a woman unfold

Katrina: Who's To Blame?

by Christopher Chantrill

A YEAR AGO New Orleans and Louisiana politicians failed to mobilize for Hurricane Katrina. That was President Bush’s fault. A year later Mississippi’s recovery from Katrina is way ahead of New Orleans. And that is President Bush’s fault too.

How easy it is to be a liberal. Whatever happens, Big Business, or Republicans, or white racists are to blame. Meanwhile a river of tax monies drops into the lap of liberal politicians every day of the year and they can buy the support of the poor, again and again. With no accountability for unfold

Suprise! Non-political Voters Aren't Political

by Christopher Chantrill

WHEN YOU ARE a conservative you want your conservative party to be conservative. You want it to stand for conservative ideas and policies.

There’s only one problem with that. Women. They tend not to vote on ideas, on parties, and on our side vs. their side. They vote for condidates because they like them. It’s enough to send a ideological party supporter crazy.

Just look at the polls on David Cameron, the young, new, non-ideological leader of the British Conservative Party. unfold

The Mood of the Voter in November

by Christopher Chantrill

SOMEHOW I THINK that the November elections this year are going to tell us something. And for a curious reason.

After a decade in which Democrats have kept their hearts hidden from the voters their base has decided that they just can’t take it any more. take a look at the portents

There is the crazed partisan ruling on terrorist surveillance from federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that reads like its author lives in a hard left-wing bubble.
There is the Stop the War candidacy of Democrat Ned Lamont.
There is the unfold

The Wages of Multiculturalism, Again

by Christopher Chantrill

A BIG PROBLEM in the war on terror, Michael Barone opines, is that we are not just fighting Islam. We are also at war with the usual suspects: the western left.

[I]n terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society... But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the unfold

The Wages of Multiculturalism

by Christopher Chantrill

A BENEFIT OF Islamic terror, Shelby Steele indicates, is that it will force the west to demolish the left-wing game of oppression.

For over a century the left has used the weapon of “oppression” to mute the power of the middle class. Today that means crying “Oppression!” to mute the power of Israel and the United States.

It keeps charging Israel and America with oppression hoping to mute American power... Yet whenever the left does this, it unfold

Robbed of Her Adolescence

by Christopher Chantrill

THE STARTLING escape from captivity of Austrian Natascha Kampusch is the very stuff of the human condition.

After years confined in a cell she suddenly sees and grabs a chance to escape from her cruel jailer.

It’s a glorious tale of ascent from dire oppression to freedom.

But it is a tale with a twist. When Wolfgang Priklopil captured her and bundled her into a white van in 1998, Natascha Kampusch was only 10 years old.

As Kate unfold

Straight Talk or Forked Tongue

by Christopher Chantrill

LOOK. I DIDN’T like John McCain in 2000. I didn’t like him running against the GOP base to the delight of the left-liberal media.

I didn’t like him taking pot-shots at President Bush in the first term, and not being much help on the tax cuts.

I didn’t like the rabbit punch at the First Amendment in the McCain-Feingold incumbent protection act.

And, if you are interested, I didn’t like the reports that he had a habit of breaking airplanes when he was in the U.S. Navy. In the RAF back in Britland they have a rule that when you unfold

A Neoconservative Lion Roars Again

by Christopher Chantrill

ONE BY ONE the great conservative voices are falling silent. The great generation of Mises, Hayek, Strauss, and Voegelin are long gone. Irving Kristol is silent, though his wife continues to write. Buckley is ageing and not as rambunctious as in his prime.

But the ageing neoconservative lion Norman Podhoretz is still roaring. And in OpinionJournal.com he gives what may be his last great contribution to this great nation. He commends President Bush’s unfold

If The Democrats Take Over Congress

by Christopher Chantrill

WANT TO THINK of something really scary? Imagine what the Democrats will do if they regain control of Congress.

Don’t worry. Financial writer James J. Cramer has already done the imagining for you.

Think about the oil companies.

Their billion-dollar profits are just too ripe for the picking. I predict that the Democrats will propose that "old oil" — oil that was discovered years ago, before the price run-up — should be subject to a high tax because it's just unfold

Are Our Children Safe?

by Christopher Chantrill

ONE OF OUR little societal problems is that, while it’s OK to attack Wal-Mart for failing to provide heroic levels of health insurance for its employees, and it’s OK to criticize the military for failing to accommodate women and gays, and it’s OK to pile onto the Catholic Church for covering up its pedophile problem, there are other institutions that seem to get a pass.

Public schools, for example. For over a generation we have known that public schools are failing to teach our children. But “our teachers” still seem to enjoy the support unfold

Soft Landing or Controlled Crash for Economy?

by Christopher Chantrill

WE ARE AT THE stage in the business cycle where pundits are talking about a soft landing for the economy. The Federal Reserve has taken away the punchbowl of cheap credit and now the question is: how bad will the hangover be?

As usual, the markets do not tell us. On the one hand home sales are declining. On the other hand, interest rates are declining. On the one hand the stock market is down. On the other hand it is off its lows.

In other words, we still don’t know what the consequence of the Federal Reserve’s ultra low interest unfold

Liberals are Different From You and Me...

by Christopher Chantrill

THEY HAVE FEWER babies. That’s the finding of Arthur C. Brooks in the Wall Street Journal. The math is pretty simple.

According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%.

Who cares? Despite the liberal slant of Big Education 80 unfold

We Must Share The Risk. But How?

by Christopher Chantrill

IT’S ALL THE fault of Big Business, writes Malcolm Gladwell in The New Yorker. After World War II Richard Gosser, head of a United Auto Workers Local, proposed a central fund for collecting and paying workers’ pensions, paid for by ten cents an hour from their wages.

But the employers would have none of it. They came up with the company-run defined-benefit pension plan. No way they were going to yield up control of pensions to the unions.

Management unfold

Wal-Mart's Global Poverty Reduction Program

by Christopher Chantrill

WHEN THE BOSTON Associates built the textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, they hired single young Yankee women right off the farm. When the farmer’s daughters went on to bigger and better things, the mills hired the Irish. When the Irish were too prosperous to work in textile mills the mills opened up in the rural Carolinas.

Now the textile mills are florishing in China. Many people don’t like the sweatshop wages and working conditions, Michael Strong writes. For sure, he unfold

Beyond Welfare Reform

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE IS doing their ten year anniversary pieces for the welfare reform act that President Clinton signed ten years ago today, August 22, in the summer of 1996.

And as he should, Bill Clinton writes today in The New York Times about his role in “ending welfare as we know it.”

The last 10 years have shown that we did in fact end welfare as we knew it, creating a new beginning for millions of Americans.

In unfold

Bibi Rallies Israel

by Christopher Chantrill

IN HIS SPEECH to the Knesset a week ago former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu worked to rally the people of Israel and prepare them for what is to come. He praised the bravery of the troops and the stoicism of the ordinary people who told him from their bunkers:

“Go on”, they said, “we are ready to stay in the bomb shelters for many more weeks, as long as you finish the job”.

Netanyahu used his time to make three points, to set the agenda for unfold

Lebanon War Not Disaster, Says Expert

by Christopher Chantrill

MILITARY EXPERT Edward N. Luttwalk has always enjoyed being a contrarian, sometimes annoyingly so.

Now that everyone is talking about the defeat of Israel in the Lebanon war, Luttwalk proposes that in retrospect it won’t seem so bad. He illustrates his points with comparisons to 1973 when it seemed that Israel was almost overrun by the Syrians and the Egyptians.

For one thing, the Hezbos did not fight as well as the unfold

Blacks, Hispanics Dip At Top NY High Schools

by Christopher Chantrill

ABOUT TEN YEARS ago New York City set up a special program to help boost enrollment of black and Hispanics at their three top high schools. You can only get into them by passing an academic test; no racial quotas allowed. So the program provided special tutoring for blacks and Hispanics.

Trouble is that the enrollment of blacks and Hispanics at the three top high schools has been going down in spite of the special tutoring program. What’s the problem, asks reporter unfold

What is Going to Happen in November?

by Christopher Chantrill

THE GENERIC ballot shows the Democrats up by 10 percent or more. And the Gallup Poll’s wrong track/right track poll shows that a majority of voters think that the nation is on the wrong track.

That means a Democratic win in the mid-term elections in November, right?

Actually, it doesn’t, according to political science candidate Jay Cost.

You can’t trust the generic ballot directly, he unfold

What is a Conservative?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT EXACTLY is a conservative, and what is a liberal? We like to squabble about such things. Partly we want to separate the sheep from the goats, and partly we want to flatter ourselves, to define our chaps on the side of the angels, and the others... well, they are on the other side.

Young and brilliant Ross Douthat takes a swing at the definition in The American Conservative, and reminds us that the “liberals” have always had the winning hand. unfold

Resource Bank for Defense of Marriage

by Christopher Chantrill

BACK IN THE 1970s gay advocates scorned “bourgeois” marriage. Now in the 2000s they are advocating “gay marriage” on civil rights grounds. And the occasional liberal court has agreed with them.

The gay marriage advocates have insisted, writes Ryan T. Anderson, that nothing about gay marriage implies polygamy or bestiality. Indeed conservatives who have argued that if gay marriage is justified on equal protection grounds then any sexual unfold

Social Attitudes and Shame

by Christopher Chantrill

EVEN THOUGH young people in Britain today are regularly drunk as skunks, university students would never think of driving drunk, claims Mary Ann Sieghart. “What a change in a generation!” she writes.

And social attitudes have changed for the better in other areas, too. People are abandoning their SUVs and recycling. It is not so much that the law has changed as a kind of “social revolution that may well save our planet.”

This social revolution is a tribute to unfold

Another Democrat Purge

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU’D THINK that political parties would do anything to keep their supporters. But no. Politicos love to purge.

Just to keep the score Bruce Bartlett reviews the number of occasions in the last 70 years since the high water mark of 1936 when the Democrats decided to expel some of their own.

It started in 1938 when FDR tried to purge the Southern Democrats in the off-year election. It didn’t work.

As a result of the failed purge, Roosevelt found his unfold

A Strategic Amplifier for World War IV

by Christopher Chantrill

NOW WHAT? After the Hezbollah terrorists successfully held off the Israeli armed forces in southern Lebanon, where do we go from here?

An answer comes from Maj. Gen. Robert H. Scales, (Ret.), writing in the Armed Forces Journal.

Think of World War I as the chemists’ war. The way that Germany kept going was by synthesizing nitrates for explosives when the supply of natural nitrates was exhausted in 1915.

World War II was the physicists’ war. It ended with a unfold

Now Look Who Served in the SS!

by Christopher Chantrill

IT IS DELICIOUS to find out that lefty German author Günther Grass spent time in the Waffen SS at the end of World War II. That is what Kate Connolly reports.

Asked why he was breaking his silence after more than 60 years, Grass said: "It had to come out finally." He added: "It will stain me forever."

Of course, Grass didn’t volunteer for the Waffen SS; he was drafted. Still, since “[t]hroughout his career he has famously criticised unfold

Feds Want More Control Over Colleges

by Christopher Chantrill

ARE YOU SURPRISED? The federal government is worried about higher education. A year ago Education Secretary Margaret Spellings set up a commission, according to Sam Dillon in The New York Times,

to examine access, affordability and accountability, to determine whether colleges were turning out students qualified to compete in the global economy.

You can see her point. The federal unfold

The Moment of Truth for "Root Cause" Politics

by Christopher Chantrill

AS WE LIMBER up to deal with the Islamist threat, writes Emanuele Ottolenghi, we need to deal with the problem right at the heart of our Enlightenment project.

On the one hand we have the benign belief in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the context of an eternal optimism. But there is also the dark side, of the French Terror of 1793,

of the tyranny of ideas over the liberty of men, of the totalitarian regimes unfold

Yes, Let's Focus on the War on Terror

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST FRIDAY The Wall Street Journal edit page folks did a reality check.

The 8/10 terror plot failed, they wrote, because

"a large number of people" had been under surveillance, with [British] police monitoring "spending, travel and communications."

As if on cue, they continued, the Democrats came out with their usual line that “the Iraq war is a diversion and provocation” from the war on terror.

Good point. Now would they have us unfold

Barone on the Democrats

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU CAN READ too much into a single election. But you can read too little too.

Michael Barone reckons that the primary election that Joe Lieberman lost last week pretty well tells us where the Democratic Party in in 2006.

In Stamford, where Joe Lieberman grew up the son of a liquor-store owner, and where there are still sizeable blue-collar and black communities, Mr. Lieberman won with 55% of the vote. In next-door Greenwich, where Ned Lamont... unfold

Flying on Hair Gel Day

by Christopher Chantrill

WAS IT HAIR gel? Or was it a sports drink? Or was it an explosive combination of the two.

Imagine the marketing opportunity! Girl stuff mixed with boy stuff makes an explosive combination.

Oh dear! Islamist Marketing Partners already thought of it!

Seriously though, President Bush ought to get the credit for a good TSA response to the latest Islamist outrage. It was my luck to be traveling to a family reunion on 8/10, and the government response was appropriate and measured.

Somebody had dragged federal employees into the unfold

NYT: Lieberman Defeated by Moderates!

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU GOTTA LOVE those guys at The New York Times. How do they characterize the defeat of Joe Lieberman? Revenge of the Netroots? Soros Money Hits Paydirt? Oh no.

It’s the revenge of the moderates, they write in an editorial.

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to unfold

Which Party Is Best For The Jews?

by Christopher Chantrill

OVER THE CENTURIES Jews have been by turns admitted, ejected, humiliated, and even annihilated by the peoples among whom they have lived.

They have had to develop sensitive antennae so they can detect trouble ahead.

So all over America, Jews must be wondering about whether they still belong in the Democratic Party. Because the rejection of Joe Lieberman by Democratic voters in the Senate primary in Connecticut is not a good sign.

Joe Lieberman was a good liberal Democrat, conforming on all the issues except one: The War in Iraq. unfold

US Turns a Political Corner

by Christopher Chantrill

LAST NIGHT we entered a new era in US politics. When political novice Ned Lamont defeated incumbent Joe Lieberman for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate with the help of George Soros and the lefty “netroots” we turned a corner onto an unfamiliar street.

The “netroots” consider themselves as a political movement like the conservative movement that came to national power in 1980. They were saying in 2004 that this was their Goldwater election. Ten or twenty years in the future they would achieve their Reagan moment and unfold

Israel At a Crossroads?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT IS GOING on with Israel’s incursion into Lebanon? Are they making any progress?

Caroline Glick thinks that it is all smoke and mirrors. She writes that the Olmert government is set to accept the UN cease fire and an international force in southern Lebanon. It wants to preserve the idea that the international force can protect Israel, that the same concept can be used to get Israel out of the West Bank, and that a ground war is unfold

The Last Gasp of the Real Ancient Regime

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT DO THE terrorists want? It is still hard to understand the point of it as Hezbollah terrorists fight against a resolute Israeli nation defending its national state borders.

But back in the fall of 2005 Frederick Turner nailed it for us.

The terrorists are fighting to prevent modern democratic states from being born. They are not fighting oppressors, or representing an ethnic nation yearning to be free. Ordinary Iraqis have shown with their purple fingers what they unfold

Forget the "Nutroots" Fantasy

by Christopher Chantrill

THREE MONTHS before an election that could be the toughest for Republicans since the Year of the Woman in 1992, too many conservatives are writing the Democrats off as “nutroots” or imagining that they are self-destructing.

Writes Dean Barnett on the Hugh Hewitt blog,

A rough conventional wisdom seems to be forming that if Ned Lamont wins tomorrow night, it will be disastrous for the Democratic Party.

He takes his cue from unfold

Do People Need Religion To Make Babies?

by Christopher Chantrill

WHY HAS EUROPE stopped making babies, asks Frederick Turner?

Is it hardly due to pestilence or environmental degradation. It seems to be more a matter of active choice.

The reason people stop replacing themselves is, I would argue, cultural.

What, basically, persuades people not to have babies even when they have the political, social and economic stability to do so? Among the eras and nations where this phenomenon occurs or occurred one basic unfold

More Studies Say That Professors are Lefties

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS ISN’T news. But Critical Review has just published a couple of scholarly papers that find university professors to be overwhelmingly Democrat in political orientation.

In Faculty Partisan Affiliations in All Disciplines Christopher F. Cardiff and Daniel B. Klein demonstrate that, yes, university faculty are unfold

Your Teen Daughter is On Her Way to Meet a Kid She Met Online...

by Christopher Chantrill

ARE YOU A MOTHER worried about your daughter’s online chat activities? According to Mary Wakefield

Around 70 per cent of all British and American early teens have regular access to the web, says the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, and of that 70 per cent, nearly 10 per cent admit to having happily trotted off, alone, to meet up with an unknown internet buddy.

Good luck to unfold

The Moderate Muslims Meet in Denmark

by Christopher Chantrill

WHATEVER HAPPENED to the moderate Muslims? That has been the refrain ever since 9/11. When President Bush spoke of Islam as a religion of peace it was presumably to encourage the moderate Muslims to come forward and declare themselves for democracy and capitalism.

Don’t look now, but the moderates have arrived. “Islam’s Moderates are On The March,” writes Irshad Manji, author of The Trouble With Islam Today.

There is reform in Pakistan. For 30 years unfold

Another Reason For Israel to Beat Hezbollah

by Christopher Chantrill

WE’RE ALL WAITING around for Ehud Olmert to learn the ropes as a war-time Prime Minister of Israel. And vanquish Hezbollah.

But Charles Krauthammer reminds us that Israel has two reasons to nail down a decisive victory.

One is to ensure its own survival. The other concerns its relationship with the United States.

For decades there has been a debate in the United States over Israel's strategic value... whether, in unfold

Now We Understand the 1930s

by Christopher Chantrill

WE ALL LOVE to tut-tut about the appeasers of the 1930s. How could they have been so blind, we ask knowingly? Didn’t Hitler promise in Mein Kampf that he was going to off the Jews? Shouldn’t we have got the message on Kristallnacht when the Nazi thugs went around Germany trashing Jewish businesses? Austria? Czechoslovakia?

“Not any longer,” writes Victor Davis Hanson.

That has never been more evident than in the last unfold

Speaking Truth To Liberal Power

by Christopher Chantrill

TALKING-HEAD Juan Williams is a reliable liberal voice on Fox News. David Fraser is a Briton who worked for decades as a probation officer. What do these two have in common?

The liberal intelligentsia doesn’t want to hear about their books.

Juan Williams has written Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It, in which unfold

Finally, A Brit Takes on the Israel Haters

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE HAS declared that actor Mel Gibson is a drunken anti-Semitic lout, after his little problem with the law last week.

But there are plenty of people who have been nipping at the same bottle, writes British politician and opinion writer Boris Johnson.

Come on, Blair! they write from their wisteria-clad redoubts... When are you all going to stop poodling and call a halt to Israeli unfold

Limbaugh Listeners No. 2 in News Knowledge

by Christopher Chantrill

WHEN THE PEW Research Center for the People and the Press released its latest Survey Report on news consumption, entitled Online Papers Modestly Boost Newspaper Readership, you couldn’t blame Rush Limbaugh for boosting it.

The Pew chappies rate Rush Limbaugh listeners most knowledgeable about news, right after readers of the Weekly unfold

What's Next for Conservatives?

by Christopher Chantrill

IN THE AUTUMN of the Bush years, conservatives are asking what worked and what comes next. It is clear that compassionate conservatism was a mixed blessing. It obtained tactical successes in winning the support of women and Hispanics, but it released the brakes on federal spending.

And, Andrew E. Busch writes, in issues like education and prescription drugs it conceded massive increases in spending without a corresponding advance in choice and ownership. When unfold

A Dictator Hands Over Power, For Now

by Christopher Chantrill

SO FINALLY General Pinochet, after 47 years as dictator of Chile, yielded power to his ageing brother in the wake of emergency intestinal surgery. It’s true that he ruled with an iron fist, allowed conservative spokesmen, but at least he made Chile the economic powerhouse of South America, made individual Chileans prosperous with his radical pension reform, and exported its wine to all the world.

Oh dear. Wrong dictator! And of course, Gen. Pinochet didn’t rule for half a century. After the coup in which he ended the chaotic rule of unfold

Reader Mail on Seattle's Cult of Victimhood

by Christopher Chantrill

THINGS REALLY are as bad as you think in Seattle. My article on the Seattle cult of victimhood inspired several alert readers to send me their thoughts, including these two horror stories.

One reader reports training employees at Seattle City Light in the use of some new equipment. It sounds like a comedy skit, only you are not allowed to laugh at such things.

Of the five City Light employees training on the new equipment, one was African American, one unfold

A Pause for Optimism

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT WITH TV screens filled with mayhem and panicked pundits screaming that all is lost, it is easy to throw up your hands and lose all hope.

But Michael Barone suggests that all is not lost yet. He uses the model of Thomas Barnett, “who divides the world into a functioning "Core" (North America, Europe, East Asia, rising China and India) and a nonfunctional "Gap" (the Middle East, most of Africa, part of the Andean chain in South America).”

Barnett’s Big Idea unfold