Blogs for 2007 - Road to the Middle Class

BACK IN the good old day kids used to drink a little here and there, you know, back when we were young, writes Jane Shilling in The Times of London. But things are a bit different In Britain today.

[T]hese days teenage social life consists of drinking to get drunk. Not fuzzy. Throwing-up drunk – and then carrying on, like the Ancient Roman. And not occasionally, but habitually.

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Thomas: Confirmation Was All About Abortion

by Christopher Chantrill

SUPREME Court Justice Clarence Thomas is appearing on 60 Minutes this Sunday with Steve Kroft, reports the Drudge Report. Thomas has a book coming out.

What was that rancorous confirmation battle all about 16 years ago. Abortion, of course.

"That was the elephant in the room... That was the issue. That is the issue that people are apparently so upset about," he tells Kroft. unfold

Why Some Cultures Don't Die

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT WITH the decline of the west—particularly the demographic collapse in western Europe—it is appropriate to ask: Why?

Or perhaps, as the Asia Times Spengler asks, why not? For the normal thing is extinction, not flourishing.

[A] majority of the world’s cultures simply will themselves out of existence, largely through the individual decision of their members not to rear offspring.

Just like today’s unfold

Fifty Years After Little Rock

by Christopher Chantrill

THE CONFRONTATION at Little Rock, Arkansas, fifty years ago, was the moment where the United States had to choose between democracy and white supremacy, writes Shelby Steele.

It was an epochal moment. The world has always believed in racial supremacy, my race over your race. For two thousand years Christianity had said it was wrong. For two hundred years the Enlightenment had said it was wrong.

And so it was that in the fall of 1957 unfold

Race Commission Out in UK

by Christopher Chantrill

THOSE OF you who believe that in the modern world we should judge people by the content of their character will no doubt be glad to hear that the British Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) is going out of business.

Unfortunately it is only going out of business because “its duties are acquired by the Commission for Equality and Human Rights next month,” as Rod Liddle reports in the London unfold

Then Why Are We Arguing?

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYONE agrees that President George W. Bush is determined to “win” in Iraq, and that the Democrats are determined to bring our troops home.

But that is not what Senator John Kerry (D-MA) is saying, according to Martin Schram. On Meet the Press a week ago on September 16,

Mr. Kerry was rather sharp and certainly clear in stating the Democrats’ position on the Iraq war. He did unfold

'I'm a Supply-Sider' says Bush

by Christopher Chantrill

THANKS GOODNESS we can finally report that Bush is not in denial. Yes, before a tough, hard-nosed audience of the nation’s top reporters, he finally admitted it, as the New York Sun reports.

“I am a Supply-Sider,” he said.

"We did it by cutting taxes. The tax cuts worked. The economy recovered. People are working. Interest rates are low." And then he said, in what will become a famous sentence, "I am a supply-sider." He said he believed that unfold

Conservatives Jumped to Support Chemerinsky

by Christopher Chantrill

DUKE UNIVERSITY law professor Erwin Chemerinksy is about as left as you can get. But when he got the shaft from UC-Irvine, summarily fired as Dean of the future law school before he could even take up his duties, conservative commentators sprang to his support. And even the lefty LA Times noticed:

Righties defend dismissed lefty law dean Chemerinsky

The commentators that the Times excerpted included unfold

Dueling Health Plans

by Christopher Chantrill

THIS WEEK Senator Clinton (D-NY) announced her new approach to health care, report Patrick Healy and Robin Toner in The New York Times. Trying to avoid the fate of Hillary 1.0, version 2.0 is called “The American Health Choices Plan.” As Healy and Toner put it:

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Fed Cuts by 0.5 Point

by Christopher Chantrill

TODAY THE Federal Reserve Board cut its federal funds rate by 0.5 point reports Martin Crutsinger of the AP.

The Fed announced Tuesday that it was reducing its target for the federal funds rate, the interest that banks charge each other, from 5.25 percent to 4.75 percent. The half-point reduction was double the quarter-point move that many economists had been expecting.

Stocks soared and the 30-year Treasury Bond slumped. So is unfold

Raise Taxes Why Don't You

by Christopher Chantrill

REP. CHARLES Rangel (D-NY) is now chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. He’s the guy who gets to change our federal taxes.

According to Robert Novak he’s a man on a mission.

Rangel wants to make history. His staff is hard at work on an audacious plan that over the next decade would redistribute up to a trillion dollars in American income through the tax system.

He wants to unfold

Politics and the Classroom

by Christopher Chantrill

GOOD NEWS from Iran, reported by Amir Taheri. The Iranian revolutionary regime has decided to purge the universities.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to "cleanse" the Iranian educational system of what he calls "the corrupt influence of the infidel"

This the second time that the Iranian regime has decided to purge the education system. The first time was in 1980 unfold

Call Me Mary not Maricruz

by Christopher Chantrill

WHAT IS happening out there, with respect to the mortgage meltdown and immigration? Maybe a total meltdown according to a commenter at HousingBubbleBlog:

Maybe OT, but let me know what you think. I’m a high school English teacher in OC [Orange County, CA]. Some very interesting things are afoot in Anaheim public schools.

The AP in charge of scheduling says our freshmen enrollment is down 100 kids, about 5% off normal. We’ve been reading about unfold

Putting the MoveOn.orgers on the Couch

by Christopher Chantrill

ALL ANIMALS live by killing. That’s the awful truth that we spend our lives avoiding. Even your average cow does nothing but kill innocent living grasses all day.

Some people believe that they know a higher truth than the instinctive need to live and the instinctive desire to protect your own. They believe that we can break the “cycle of violence.” And that leads them away from loyalty to their community or nation. As unfold

Fighting for Kids in Utah

by Christopher Chantrill

THE UTAH Education Association has got $3 million from the National Education Association to fight school choice in Utah. As Ken Blackwell reports it:

The head of Utah’s largest teachers’ union promised an "ugly, mean and expensive" campaign, and the National Education Association has given her $3 million to wage it.

They are fighting against the Parents Choice in Education Act, passed by the Utah unfold

How Economic Crackpots Devoured American Politics

by Christopher Chantrill

CONSERVATIVES and Republicans keep hoping that liberals will actually admit that supply-side economics works, that is that low tax rates and limited government is the best prescription for prosperity.

But liberals just don’t want to accept of grace and love, spurning the offer of friendship made by Sir Walter Blunt to Harry Percy in Henry IV Part One.

In fact Jonathan Chait, Senior unfold

Bush Prepares the Domestic Battlefield

by Christopher Chantrill

WE’VE said here repeatedly that the one thing that the Bush administration needs to do on Iraq is hand it to the Democrats in January 2009. The only mistake he can make is to get the US out of Iraq before then. Because if he does that then he gives the Democrats a generational sound-bite. “Bush Lost Iraq.”

But with the qualified success of the “surge” and the inability of the Democrats to demand an immediate withdrawal, Bush has achieved his strategic objective. American troops unfold

Could Bush Have Brought Dems Aboard?

by Christopher Chantrill

SIX YEARS after 9/11 Jonah Goldberg reminds us that if he had written on 9/12 that six years later a Democratic presidential candidate would be “ridiculing the idea of the war on terror as a bumper sticker” or that “a third of Democrats would be telling pollsters that Bush knew in advance about 9/11” they would have called him mad.

But, Goldberg writes, George Bush must take some of the blame for the unfold

Americans Get the Big Picture

by Christopher Chantrill

TODAY AS Gen. Petraeus reports to Congress on the limited results of the “surge”—that it is reducing insurgent activity but not solving the political situation in Iraq, it is helpful to look at the big picture, as Michael Barone does.

He notes that independents join with Democrats in blaming President Bush for the conduct of the war in Iraq.

And he notes that independents side with Republicans in agreeing that the unfold

Being Unserious about Don Rumsfeld

by Christopher Chantrill

IF YOU WERE given the opportunity to interview former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, what would you want to ask him? Something like this, I would think:

What have we achieved in the last six years?
What is the nature of the Islamist enemy?
How do you think the US national security establishment should approach the future?
How do you think the US military is adjusting to the reforms you put in place?
How would you address the American people about what to expect in the unfold

Mortgage Mess Hits Real Economy

by Christopher Chantrill

STOCKS ARE in broad retreat today on the Bureau of Labor Statistics monthly Employment Situation Summary. As Jeannine Aversa of Associated Press writes:

Employers sliced payrolls by 4,000 jobs in August, the first such decline in four years and a stark sign that a painful credit crunch that has unnerved Wall Street is putting a strain on the national economy.

As usual, unfold

Pavarotti: Singers on The Voice

by Christopher Chantrill

LUCIANO Pavarotti, primo tenore assoluto of our times, died September 6 aged 71. Pavarotti was a baker’s son from Modena in Emilia Romagna and had a remarkable voice. It was immediately recognizable in any recording.

But what did his peers, the headline opera singers, think of his voice? For that is the only thing that really matters about a great tenor: The Voice. The London unfold

Chuck Schumer Doesn't Get It

by Christopher Chantrill

MANY CONSERVATIVES have reacted with outrage to the remarks by Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). Sen. Schumer asserts that the pacification of Anbar province has occurred despite the “surge” mounted by the US Armed Forces. As Hugh Hewitt reports, to Schumer:

The inability of American soldiers to protect these tribes from al Qaeda said to these tribes we have to fight al Qaeda ourselves. It wasn’t that the unfold

DeLay Hammers Lauer

by Christopher Chantrill

YOU HAVE to hand it to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. He believes that politics is a contact sport and he doesn’t believe in truckling to the media. Why should he? It wouldn’t buy him anything anyway.

So when the Today Show invited him to come on and answer questions about the Republican scandals—Foley, Abramhoff, Ritter, and Craig—DeLay wasn’t buying it, as Brent Bozell III unfold

Yet There's a Welder Shortage

by Christopher Chantrill

EVERYBODY knows that the industrial sector is shrinking leaving behind a creaking Rust Belt. The “good jobs with good wages” that sustained New York, Ohio, and Michigan are gone for good.

Then how come there is a shortage of welders? Bill Steigerwald asked Joel Kotkin about that. It’s a myth, Kotkin says. unfold

Conservatives on Horn of Dilemma

by Christopher Chantrill

HEY, THIS isn’t hard, insists Janet Daley in London’s Daily Telegraph. When it comes to the great public services delivered by the welfare state you have to make your choice.

You either believe that the state should administer the delivery of these services by controlling them from the centre, or you do not.

But, she complains, the British unfold