Underlying Problems in Medicare

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

One of the problems about dealing with and debating an issue as big and as complicated as Medicare is that most people simply don’t care what it costs to take care of senior citizens.

Certainly not the senior citizens currently on Medicare. It is the best deal in the nation they are ever going to get in terms of buying health insurance for around $310-$360/month. Many self-employed people now paying close to $1000/month would give their eyes and teeth and other certain parts of their body to be able to find ANY comprehensive health care insurance for anything near $350/month. Continue reading →

Miranda

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Suddenly, every cable news anchor, every pundit, every Sunday show guest, and every waiter in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia has become an expert on whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be informed of his Miranda rights.

Let’s assume, for the moment, that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, has never watched a single episode of “Law & Order” in any of its manifestations and, thus, does not know he can ask for a lawyer – or refuse to answer any questions with a lawyer or without. Continue reading →

Homeland

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Season Three of Homeland might debut in September on Showtime, but on CNN, MSNBC, Fox and all of the other networks, Homeland season three debuted last night.

Talk about reality and fantasy merging together.

Some might have thought that the television series starring Damian Lewis and Clare Danes and the always entertaining Mandy Pantinkin had already jumped the shark. Continue reading →

The Gun Vote

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

This column is about the vote on Wednesday in the U.S. Senate on the amendment to the gun control bill which had two main sponsors: Democrat Joe Manchin (WVa) and Republican Pat Toomey (Pa).

The effect of the amendment would have been, among other things, to have increased background checks on people buying guns to include gun shows and internet sales.

I don’t want to discuss the merits of the amendment; I want to chat about why it failed in the face of overwhelming popular support. Continue reading →

The Rule of Three’s

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Why do these things always happen in threes?

First, the Boston attacks at the conclusion of the Marathon. Then, the ricin letter sent to Senator Wicker. Finally, the explosion in Waco.

What the Hell is going on here?

There is no connection between the three. The crackpot in Mississippi had nothing to do with the Boston Massacre, and I doubt whatever happened in Waco had any connection to either event. Continue reading →

Say Again?

BY GARY JOHNSON
Reprinted from Loose Change (TCBMag.com)

“Hear the birds? Sometimes I try to imagine what it’s like to be deaf and not hear the birds. It’s actually not that bad.”—Larry David

The art of listening, it’s Oprah-esque. Can’t you see her talking to soul man Gary Zukav about it on Sunday morning, i.e., listening as a sacred, overt act of compassion? Psychologists refer to it as making room for another. Be. The. Silence. Did you know that people only internalize 25 to 50 percent of what they hear? We really aren’t very good listeners. But the horse I rode in on today is not about listening.

My name is Gary, and I’m deaf as a wooden post. Continue reading →

Terrorists Never Win in America

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

In 1605, Guy Fawkes and a group of disgruntled English Catholics hatched a plan to blow the British Parliament to smithereens by tunneling under the massive building, rolling in kegs of gunpowder and lighting the whole thing afire just as the House of Lords was entertaining King James the First.

Alas, the plan was discovered before the spark was lit, and Guy Fawkes and his merry band of terrorists were executed and the cause of freedom of worship for English Catholics was set back for hundreds of years.

Most terrorist bombing campaigns don’t work. But some do. Continue reading →

The Thin Veneer of Civilization

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Originally published on October 16, 2002, 13 months after the 9/11 attacks.

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary defines the word “civilization” thus: An ideal state of human culture characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.

In the United States, we pretend to live our entire lives in a constant “State of Positive Assumptions.” The central assumption is we DO live in a country “characterized by complete absence of barbarism and non-rational behavior.” Continue reading →

False Sense of Insecurity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Here we go again.

On my morning walk with my dog I saw the Capitol Police friend of mine. We both shook our heads at the events that happened in Boston. Here we go again, we both said.

More overtime is in the future for him. More insecurity for me and my family.

We don’t know who set off the bombs in Boston. It could have been a Saudi National. That was the early speculation. It could have been a home-grown Continue reading →

Lead, Follow, Or….

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

In the ’60s a battle cry of anti-war (and anti-Lyndon Johnson) college students was “Lead, follow or get out of the way;” a concept that morphed into lyrics for Bob Dylan’s anthem, “The Times They are a’Changin.”

President Obama has tried his version of leading – which has been mostly attempting to bully Congressional Republicans into submission. It hasn’t worked.

For about five minutes after his reelection we were told he was going to spend Continue reading →

Seeing the Big Picture

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) were the highest-profile stars of the Tea Party Class of 2010. They successfully scared two centrists out of the Republican Party before a primary vote was even cast, and were held out as examples of conservative leadership, dedicated to stopping President Obama at all costs.

Less than three years later, they no longer seem to be so extreme. Instead of being content to vote “no” and go home, they are in the middle of the various Senate gangs. Toomey is working with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to enact Continue reading →

‘Smoke-and-Mirrors’ Budget

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

Know who ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ is? He is the last player drafted in every NFL Draft each year. He is considered the least important player with the lowest possible chance of making an impact on an NFL roster come regular season.

How can President Barack Obama be considered ‘Mr. Irrelevant’ when it comes to managing the most important problem facing us today in America, the federal budget and its attendant deficit and debt complications?

Let us count the ways: Continue reading →

Throwing In the Towel on Obama

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

Barack Obama’s second term is off to a very bad start. Even liberal commentators – at least those with any credibility – are suggesting it may be time for him to lead more and campaign less.

Obama brought a plane load (Air Force One) of relatives of victims of the horror in Newtown to lobby Senators on the eve of a procedural vote, now scheduled for tomorrow, on a gun control bill.

Politico.com reporter Reid Epstein wrote: President Barack Obama’s gone from ambitious arguments for sweeping gun control to trying to stop a filibuster. Continue reading →

Immigration Is Just a Start

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

On Dec. 5, 1933, right after dinner bells rang across the country, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a proclamation that ended Prohibition and solidified the vast majority of Catholic votes for the Democratic Party for 40 years.

The first time Catholics voted overwhelmingly Democratic was in 1884, when a spokesman for a group of New York preachers, a guy named Samuel Burchard, condemned Grover Cleveland for being from a party that represented “rum, Romanism and rebellion.” That little statement energized German and Irish Catholics to swing the vote against James Blaine, giving a close election to Cleveland. Continue reading →

Equality: Background Checks for Everyone

BY FRANK HILL
Reprinted from TelemachusLeaps.com

The recent call from President Obama and advocates of stricter gun control laws for ‘universal background checks’ brought to mind this one unifying thought: Why not do this for everyone?

Think about it. Much of what separates us as a nation has to do with what any certain faction wants to do to another group of people in our society. ‘We’ think ‘they’ should be better regulated; restricted, prevented from having the same freedoms as we do, primarily because we think something is ‘wrong’ with them. Continue reading →

A Missed Opportunity

BY JOHN FEEHERY
Reprinted from TheFeeheryTheory.com

I actually don’t blame some Members of the Senate for threatening to filibuster the still-mysterious gun bill.

Who knows what they have come up with in the back halls of the Congress and who know what they will end up with once this bill gets to the floor.

Mitch McConnell had it exactly right when he held out the right to support a filibuster until he actually got a glimpse of the bill.

I think the whole process has pretty much stunk. Continue reading →

Murder For Hire

BY RICH GALEN
Reprinted from Mullings.com

I am a fan of the Central Intelligence Agency. More precisely, I am a fan of the officers and analysts who, along with uniformed service members and Foreign Service Officers are at the dangerous, too often deadly, pointy end of the sword in promoting American foreign policy as enunciated by the President.

Whomever the President happens to be.

A book about the CIA’s drone program will be published tomorrow and an harrowing excerpt was published over the weekend in the New York Times. Continue reading →