Better Banter

I apologize to Robert Downey, Jr. for my comments last July. I saw the movie Iron Man recently, and the reviews are dead-on...Mr. Downey was phenomenal and the movie overall is a must see. I also take back what I said about seeing Lindsay Lohan on screen again after her conduct unbecoming during 2006 and 2007 (and which may have spilled over into 2008 but I've stopped keeping track.) What I did not see coming was this . Only in America.

A popular method of comparing political ideologies today is by placement on a horizontal straight-line continuum, where Left of the exact center of the line is classified as "liberal" and Right of center is "conservative." For most, such an overly simplistic approach is enough when debating two presidential candidates like Dennis Kucinich and Newt Gingrich. But I do find some interest in more complicated methods which add more depth to a given position or belief by adding a vertical axis. However, before you go researching the definitions of the horizontal and vertical axes in "the free encyclopedia" Wikipedia, consider my experience in just the last half hour. I was directed to Wikipedia's entry on "Right-wing politics" from another website and noted Fascism and Nazism were listed as right-wing ideologies. I navigated to the links for each and found an extreme and near-violent divide in the wiki-contributorsphere over their definitions. ...

Mark D. Lay was recently sentenced for his role in "managing" investments for Ohio's Bureau of Workers' Compensation. The losses for which Lay has been found accountable make the highly publicized Tom Noe "Coingate" case seem like a misplaced $20 (not to mention how much additional it cost Ohioans in a civil lawsuit filed against Lay by former AG Marc Dann.) I add this sad political chapter to the book on how government can't seem to do much of anything right, especially with democrats in charge (see current Congressional Approval Rating .) And I continue to be baffled by the continued demands, primarily from the Left, for things like nationalized health care and, more recently, a federal takeover of the oil industry. How has it become so difficult to identify the quacking, waddling, beak-sporting waterfowl in its broadest and simplest terms?

Somebody in Congress please read this . No, wait, you are all too busy so let me cut to the chase - there is a 95% probability of recovering 5.7 BILLION barrels of oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is estimated to equate to somewhere between 250 and 400 million barrels of oil per year (for about 65 years), beginning 7 to 12 years from the time approval was granted to explore the area. These estimates, from 1998 and based upon 1998 technology, suggest that in 5 years from opening the area, we'd have 200,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil PER DAY at our disposal. In 10 years, we'd have 400,000 to 600,000 barrels of oil. Per day. We'd reach maximum production in 20-30 years (600,000 to 1.9 million barrels of oil per day.) Did I mention the area where this 5.7 BILLION barrels of oil is located, called 1002 Area, is also just 8% of the total acreage of ANWR? That means if every square foot were completely and utterly destroyed, the caribou would still have ove...

The recent speech by Barack Obama which provided some defense of his relationship with The Reverend Jeremiah Wright and association with his church has been dissected down to near-microscopic levels by now. And before tonight, I didn't think there could be anything more to add to the conversation until I read something from almost 20 years ago that really brought the entire controversy into sharp focus for me, and its only indirectly about the race issue. What sparked my thoughts last evening on this subject were the words of Stephen R. Covey, from his 1989 book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: "(Proactivity) means more than merely taking initiative. It means that as human beings, we are responsible for our own lives. Our behavior is a function of our decisions, not our conditions. We can subordinate feelings to values. We have the intiative and responsibility to make things happen. Look at the word responsibility - 'response-ability' - the ability to choose yo...

Any number of conservative news outlets have reported stories about the feelings of the Iraqi people about America, but there's always retorts from people like New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who called Iraq "a morass" on The CBS Early Show this morning after recently endorsing Barack Obama for President. It has always incensed me when hatred for the Bush Administration manifests itself with such First Amendment expressions, but never more so then after a conversation I had today with a U.S. government employee working in Iraq that I'd like to share. His name is Jim (he has not given me the authority to share my discussion with him in this forum and so he will remain anonymous) and he is on leave stateside from his job teaching the Iraqi people centuries-old techniques of survival, namely farming and raising chickens. Jim is transported to his field "classrooms" all over the Baghdad area by U.S. military personnel, commuting in tanks, Humvees and heli...

A letter to the editor in the New York Times today laments job discrimination against... ex-cons. Evelyn Malavé of the Legal Action Center points (rightly) to the reduced rate of recidivism among ex-cons who have a job. However, should private citizens and businesses be forced to turn the other cheek, forgive and forget, and put themselves and their families at risk? Even if a company were willing to take such a risk, and let's be fair, it is a risk, what of Evelyn's colleagues in the legal profession? I'm not sure how many "who knew what when" investigations I've seen of school bus drivers with a DUI in their past. The public goes ballistic. What happens when a business knowingly employs someone with a criminal record, and something goes seriously bad? They would be sued to within an inch of their livelihood. One definition of discrimination is "The ability or power to see or make fine distinctions; discernment." Certainly discrimination in this sen...

Watching the Clinton victory speech, and she just said the following (I have a DVR and rewound just to be sure): We're ready to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan. Of course, this got sustained applause. Now it's one thing to say you want to end the war. We all want to end the war. But to say it in the same sentence as winning in Afghanistan gives us a glimpse into what she really means, doesn't it? I know, I just voted for her... but it's not like a real vote, right? BTW: Ted Strickland for veep if Hillary gets the nomination. The dems need Ohio, and he gave her quite a rousing intro. He's pretty popular here as well and could definitely make a difference in carrying the state.

Oh, the glory days. I wish I could go back in time to the mythical Ohio of Steve Kroft's yesteryear. It was quite a jet-setting place, apparently: KROFT: Used to be that almost everybody in Ohio and the Midwest took a vacation to Florida, the west coast of Florida in the wintertime, and bought a new Chevy or a Ford or Chrysler every other year. MIKE THRONE: The one that I have has 175,000 miles on it. KROFT: Anybody take a vacation to Florida in the wintertime? SCHOENHOLTZ: No. JOHN ISON: I haven't taken a vacation in five years. Well, I've only lived in Ohio for the past dozen or so years. But apparently I missed that gravy train. I showed the quote to a few natives, and the reaction was, quite naturally, to be insulted. New American cars every other year? Is this a talking point from displaced auto workers? Steve, how do you possibly justify such a comment? You might as well say that before No Child Left Behind, most children were leaving middle school to pursue Ph.D...

It rained cats and dogs today here in Ohio, and after pulling into an empty spot at my polling location this afternoon, I sat in my car for quite some time. Not because of the rain, but because I kept thinking about what I was about to do. As you've surmised, this two-time GWB voter just pulled the D-lever for Hillary Clinton. Now, before I'm discovered by the New York Times, let me explain. I voted for Hillary on a couple of different levels, one cynical, and the other above-the-board. My above-the-board reasoning is this: McCain doesn't need my vote. He will be the nominee. But if we're destined to have a Democrat in the White House, I'd like to weigh in on which one I prefer. I prefer Hillary. But not by much. Further, I will never vote for her in the general election. However, Barack Obama is somehow even scarier. He's a smooth operator, quick on his feet, and has a complicit press following. His minority status will make any GOP attack potentially "rac...

This is just maddening stuff. Hillary Clinton has decided that she knows best about what you should purchase for yourself, and if you disagree, she'll just take your money anyway. Clinton further noted that "there are a number of mechanisms" that could be used, including "going after people's wages, automatic enrollment." As the Associated Press notes, "Clinton said such measures would apply only to workers who can afford health coverage but refuse to buy it, which puts undue pressure on hospitals and emergency rooms." There is a tendency in this country to confuse health insurance with health care. Strangely, health care has been around millennia, while health insurance is a relatively recent invention. How did anyone get health care without insurance? Well, they paid for it. Or they didn't get it. We certainly don't want to revisit a world where the poor cannot see a doctor. But have we gone so far as to say that you can't get health ...

We have seen, over the course of a truly remarkable Republican primary season, a number of experienced, well-qualified candidates, each of whom would be a marked improvement over either Democratic nominee. In fact the depth of the field this year made any type of consensus quite improbable, such that the talk of pundits a few weeks ago was that we'd have a brokered convention. Now, improbably, on the eve of Super Tuesday, we have sudden clarity, and even a presumptive nominee. John McCain has all but sewn up the nomination, if you read the papers. I'm not so sure, but even if I were, I feel it's my duty to make an appeal, for whatever it's worth, for a different path. Mitt Romney is a man of many accomplishments, and has a record to be proud of. The case for Romney flip-flopping is really one for the left to make, not the right. Not because we shouldn't criticize our own, but because I believe he's showing his true colors, and if anyone might have been duped, it...

Will there be a New York Times in the 22nd Century? Not at this rate, this pundit posits. The thought occurred to me after reading today's editorial about the supposed dire straits of the Republican party (what else would the Times say?) titled "Whose Century is it Anyway?" Obviously, it's supposed to be the Times' century, and nobody else is getting the message. That the Times is in the tank for the Democrats is not a surprise. But the lengths to which they will go in advancing the Democrat agenda (or denigrading the Republicans') will sometimes still catch me off guard. This is one of those editorials that is so wrong-headed it must be answered point-by point. The general election for president is still a ways off, but the New Hampshire primary campaign is providing a preview of the ultimate contest. So far, it’s not looking so good for the Republicans. The rest of the article explains that it doesn't look good for Republicans because gosh-darn it, they ...

This is no reason to sink his candidacy (there are plenty of legitimate reasons out there to be had), but I was a bit taken aback by Mike Huckabee's victory speech in Iowa last night, when he said, "Tonight we proved that American politics is still in the hands of ordinary people like you." Ordinary people like you. Rest assured, had the patrician Mitt Romney uttered such words, his campaign would be over. Likable, affable Huckabee gets a pass. No mention of this condescension anywhere that I can find. Which is fine, as he certainly meant nothing by it. Here's the thing. Should Huckabee charm his way to the nomination, the free pass is revoked. Gaffes real and imagined will become headlines. The press will fall on him like a ton of bricks, and Mike will wake up after his landslide defeat and wonder what hit him. Really, does anyone anticipate another fawning piece by Frank Rich on Huckabee after the GOP convention gavel falls? Does anyone believe the silence about h...