Friday, February 28, 2014

I bid you good noon. I am @ dialysis & hooked up....

I bid you good noon. I am @ dialysis & hooked up. I have 4:19 left. I'll come off around 5:18pm
Carl Ray Louk

Thursday, February 27, 2014

It's the Desert, Stupid Michael Reagan | Feb 27, 2014

Michael Reagan

Someone better send John Kerry a high school geography textbook. 

Our brilliant Secretary of State doesn't seem to know that California is about two-thirds desert. 

Based on his recent statements about the cause of my home state's 13-month drought, Kerry doesn't know anything about California's history or climate, either. 

He thinks the state's current drought - which is draining reservoirs, raising fears of severe water shortages in small towns and already causing the usual idiots to demand the death penalty for lawn watering -- is the result of man-made climate change. 

If only more of Kerry's Hollywood soul mates would drive a Tesla, if only every American could be forced to walk or windsurf to work each day, we could save California from drying up and blowing away. 

Not exactly, Secretary. California's mostly a desert. It's been one for eons. Deserts tend to, ah, have water issues - especially when tens of millions of people live in them. 

My native state has been subject to droughts that make the current mini-drought look like monsoon season. This dry spell is nothing compared to the mega-droughts of old. 

How about the one that started in the year 850 - and lasted 240 years? Or the shorter one that began in about 1100 and ended in 1300? Did humans cause them too, Secretary? 

Were the Tongva people who lived in L.A. before the Spanish arrived driving too many big SUVs or barbecuing too many mountain lions?

When I was growing up in Southern California we had droughts. 

But in 1960 we didn't have to worry about running out of water because we had a competent state government that had built enough dams, reservoirs and aqueducts to serve its 16 million people. 

Now we've got 37 million Californians and a government that's more interested in tearing down dams, diverting river water to save endangered fish and building $68 billion bullet trains than investing in our future water needs. 

The L.A. Times had a big piece about the drought recently. It trotted out a bunch of experts who said we have a real dumb state and federal water policy in California, which was news to no one. 

The experts also said we waste too much water. Farmers waste it. Homeowners waste it. Businesses and golf courses waste it. And they said we're all going to have to learn to use less water and pay more for it in the future. 

So let's get this straight. 

First the politicians create the water problem by not building enough dams to store the water we'll need when the next inevitable drought comes. 

Now they want to solve the water shortage they created by telling me not to use so much water? On top of that, they want to make me pay more for less water so that the guys who sell the water can keep their profits up? 

Sounds like a typical government operation to me. 

The experts in the L.A. Times article never addressed the idea of creating a free-market mechanism that would allow people - mainly farmers who consume 80 percent of the water -- to buy and sell water rights as a way to allocate our water resources efficiently. 

And they pooh-poohed the idea that the answer to our future water needs is more reservoirs, which they said are too expensive. 

I think the water experts are all wet. 

This week two huge rainstorms are coming in off the Pacific. By Saturday I'll be able to go over to the Los Angeles River and see it at full flood stage. The streets nearby might be flooded. 

Talk about wasting water. Talk about stupid. All that rainwater will flow straight into the ocean. 

California has built some water reservoirs since 1960, but we need to build more. That way, when we have to pray for rain and it comes we'll have somewhere to hold it.

 
Michael Reagan

Michael Reagan

Michael Reagan, the eldest son of Ronald Reagan, is heard daily by over 5 million listeners via his nationally syndicated talk radio program, "The Michael Reagan Show."
 
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
"LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000
"THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD
"EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941
"FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895
"FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 
"I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock 
"TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 
"EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS

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New Assaults on American Law Judge Andrew Napolitano | Feb 27, 2014

Judge Andrew Napolitano

In the months since Edward Snowden revealed the nature and extent of the spying that the National Security Agency (NSA) has been perpetrating upon Americans and foreigners, some of the NSA's most troublesome behavior has not been a part of the public debate. This behavior constitutes the government's assaults on the American legal system. Those assaults have been conducted thus far on two fronts, one of which is aimed at lawyers who represent foreign entities here in America, and the other is aimed at lawyers who represent criminal defendants against whom evidence has been obtained unlawfully and presented in court untruthfully.

Investigative reporters at The New York Times recently discovered that the NSA has been listening to the telephone conversations between lawyers at a highly regarded Chicago law firm and their clients in Indonesia. The firm, Mayer Brown, has remained publicly silent about the revelations, as has its client, the government of Indonesia. But it is well known that Mayer Brown represents the government of Indonesia concerning trade regulations that govern exports of cigarettes and shrimp to the U.S. The lawyers on the other side of the bargaining table from Mayer Brown work for the federal government, which also employs, of course, the NSA.

Can the NSA lawfully tell lawyers for the government who are negotiating with Mayer Brown lawyers what it overheard between the Mayer Brown lawyers and their client? The answer, incredibly, is: Yes. Federal rules prohibit the NSA from sharing knowledge with lawyers for the federal government only about persons who have been indicted. In this case, Mayer Brown is attempting to negotiate favorable trade relations between Indonesia and the U.S., and the lawyers for the U.S. have the unfair advantage of knowing in advance the needs, negotiating positions and strategy of their adversaries. In the Obama years, this is how the feds work: secretly, unfairly and in utter derogation of the attorney-client privilege.

For 100 years, that privilege -- the right of lawyers and their clients to speak freely and without the knowledge of the government or their adversaries -- has been respected in the U.S., until now. Now, we have a lawyer who, as president, uses the NSA to give him advance warning of what his office visitors are about to ask him. And now we have lawyers for the federal government who work for the president and can know of their adversaries' most intimate client communications.

This is profoundly unfair, as it gives one side a microscope on the plans of the other. It is unwise, too, as clients will be reluctant to open up to counsel when they know that the NSA could spill the beans to the other side. In the adversarial context, for the system to work fairly and effectively, it is vital that clients be free to speak with their lawyers without the slightest fear of government intrusion, particularly when the government is on the other side of the deal or the case.

If you have spoken to a lawyer recently and if that lawyer is dealing with the federal government on your behalf, you can thank the constitutional scholar in the Oval Office for destroying the formerly privileged nature of your conversations.

But that is not the only legal protection that President Obama has destroyed. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in a case in which journalists in the pre-Snowden era challenged the government's spying on them. The government won the case largely because it persuaded the court that the journalists did not have standing to bring the lawsuit because, the court ruled, their fears of being spied upon were only hypothetical: They suspected that their communications with their sources were being monitored, but they couldn't prove it. In this post-Snowden era, we now know that the journalists in that case were being spied upon.

Nevertheless, during the oral argument in that case, government lawyers told the high court that should government prosecutors acquire from the NSA evidence of criminal behavior against anyone whom they eventually would prosecute and should they wish to use that evidence in the prosecution, the Justice Department would inform defense counsel of the true source of the evidence so that the defendant would have the ability to challenge the evidence.

Yet, last week, in a case in federal court in Oregon, the same Justice Department that told the highest court in the land last year that it would dutifully and truthfully reveal its sources of evidence -- as case law requires and even when the source is an NSA wiretap -- told a federal district court judge that it had no need or intention of doing so. If this practice of using NSA wiretaps as the original source of evidence in criminal cases and keeping that information from the defendants against whom it is used is permitted, we will have yet another loss of liberty.

Federal law requires that criminal prosecutions be commenced after articulable suspicion about the crime and the defendant. Prosecutions cannot be commenced by roving through intelligence data obtained through extra-constitutional means. That is the moral equivalent of throwing a dart at a dart board that contains the names of potential defendants and prosecuting the person whose name the dart hits.

For the past 75 years, federal prosecutors have not been permitted to use unlawfully obtained evidence in criminal cases, and they have been required to state truthfully the sources of their evidence so that its lawfulness can be tested. This rule generally has served to keep law enforcement from breaking the laws it has sworn to uphold by denying to its agents the fruits of their own unlawful activity.

Liberty is rarely lost overnight. It is lost slowly and in the name of safety. In the name of keeping us safe, the feds have spied on the lawyers who negotiate with them, lied to the lawyers whose clients they are prosecuting and misrepresented their behavior to the Supreme Court. As far as the public record reveals, they have not corrected that misrepresentation. They have done all of this in utter defiance of well-settled law and procedures and constitutional safeguards.

What will they do next?

 
Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Andrew Napolitano

Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995, during which time he presided over 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings and hearings. He taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years, and he returned to private practice in 1995. Judge Napolitano began television work in the same year.
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
"LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000
"THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD
"EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941
"FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895
"FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 
"I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock 
"TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 
"EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS

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Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Raise the Minimum Wage to $14 An Hour Using This One Easy Trick Ann Coulter | Fe

Ann Coulter

Democrats believe they've hit on the perfect issue to distract from the horror of Obamacare in the 2014 elections: the minimum wage.

Apparently, increasing the minimum wage was not important for American workers during the first five years of Obama's presidency -- least of all his first two years, when Democrats controlled Congress and could have passed anything. (And did!)

No. The minimum wage did not become a pressing concern until an election year in which the public's hatred of Obamacare is expected to be the central issue.

As The New York Times explained, Democrats see the minimum wage as an issue that "will place Republican candidates in a difficult position," and also as a tool "to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off."

(Unlike Republicans, Democrats consider it important to win elections.)

To most people, it seems as if the Democrats are giving workers something for nothing. But there are always tradeoffs. No serious economist denies that increasing the minimum wage will cost jobs. If it's not worth paying someone $10 an hour to do something, the job will be eliminated -- or it simply won't be created.

The minimum wage is the perfect Democratic issue. It will screw the very people it claims to help, while making Democrats look like saviors of the working class, either by getting them a higher wage or providing them with generous government benefits when they lose their jobs because of the mandatory wage hike.

Of course, the reason American workers' wages are so low in the first place is because of the Democrats' policies on immigration. Republicans might want to point that out.

Since the late 1960s, the Democrats have been dumping about a million low-skilled immigrants on the country every year, driving down wages, especially at the lower end of the spectrum.

According to Harvard economist George Borjas, our immigration policies have reduced American wages by $402 billion a year -- while increasing profits for employers by $437 billion a year. (That's minus what they have to pay to the government in taxes to support their out-of-work former employees. Of course, we're all forced to share that tax burden.)

Or, as the White House puts it on its website promoting an increase in the minimum wage, "Today, the real value of the minimum wage has fallen by nearly one-third since its peak in 1968."

Why were wages so high until 1968? Because that's when Teddy Kennedy's 1965 Immigration Act kicked in, bringing in about a million immigrants a year, almost 90 percent of them unskilled workers from the Third World.

Our immigration policies massively redistribute wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. It's a basic law of economics that when the supply goes up, the price goes down. More workers means the price of their labor plummets.

Unfortunately, politicians spend a lot more time talking to rich employers than to working-class Americans. And the rich apparently have an insatiable appetite for cheap labor.

Having artificially created a glut of low-wage workers, now Democrats want to artificially raise their wages.

It's win-win-win-win-win for Democrats.

-- Employees who get a higher minimum wage are grateful to the Democrats.

-- Employees who lose their jobs because of the minimum wage hike are grateful to the Democrats for generous government handouts.

-- Poor immigrants who need government benefits are grateful to the Democrats.

-- American businesses enjoying the deluge of cheap labor are grateful to the Democrats.

-- Democratic politicians guaranteed re-election by virtue of ethnic bloc voting are grateful to the Democrats.

Do Republicans have any principles at all? Why isn't the GOP demanding an end to this dump of unskilled workers/Democratic voters on the country?

Democrats show how much they love the poor by importing a million more of them to America each year. But then they prevent the last batch of poor immigrants from getting decent, well-paying jobs by bringing in another million poor people the next year.

You want a higher minimum wage? Turn off the spigot of low-wage workers pouring in to the U.S. and it will rise on its own through the iron law of supply and demand.

In response to the Democrats' minimum wage proposal, Republicans should introduce a bill ending both legal and illegal immigration until the minimum wage rises naturally to $14 an hour.

Australia has a $15 minimum wage for adults -- more than twice the U.S. minimum wage. Meanwhile, their official unemployment rate is lower than ours: 6 percent compared to 6.6 percent in the U.S. -- and that's with a lousy $7.25 minimum wage.

Sound good? Try immigrating there. Australia has some of the most restrictive immigration policies in the world. Their approach to immigration is to admit only people who will be good for Australia. (Weird!) Applicants are evaluated on a point system that gives preference to youth, English proficiency, education and skill level.

Similarly, New Zealand will soon have an official minimum wage of $14.25 for adults. Even our Democrats aren't proposing that! New Zealand's minimum wage hit $10.10 -- the Democrats' current proposal for us -- back in 2006. Their unemployment rate is also 6 percent -- up from several years of 4 percent unemployment a few years ago.

Like Australia, New Zealand's immigration laws are based on helping New Zealand, not on helping other countries get rid of their poor people, which is our policy.

Instead of training the citizenry to look at the government as our paternal benefactor, distributing minimum wage laws and unemployment benefits in important election years, why don't Republicans put an end to the artificial glut of low-wage, low-skilled workers being imposed on the country by our immigration laws?

Republicans could guarantee a $14 minimum wage simply by closing the pipeline of more than 1 million poor immigrants coming in every year.

Businessmen will gripe, but maybe the GOP could explain to their Chamber of Commerce friends that they will help them by slashing oppressive regulations, reining in government bureaucracies, passing tort reform, etc. They'll also be able to cut taxes because the welfare state will shrink, a result of Americans going back to work.

But if the plutocrats insist on admitting another 30 million Democratic voters in order to get ever-cheaper labor, then, soon, Republicans won't be in a position to help them at all.

 
Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter

Ann Coulter is a columnist and author of Guilty: Liberal Victims and Their Assault On America.
 
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
"LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000
"THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD
"EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941
"FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895
"FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 
"I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock 
"TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 
"EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS

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Solutions to Black Education Walter E. Williams | Feb 26, 2014

Walter E. Williams

A fortnight ago, my column focused on how Philadelphia's schoolteachers have joined public-school teachers in cities such as Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Columbus, New York and Washington in changing student scores on academic achievement tests. Teachers have held grade fixing parties, sometimes wearing rubber gloves to hide fingerprints. In some cases, poorly performing students were excused from taking exams to prevent them from dragging down averages. As a result of investigations, a number of schoolteachers and administrators have been suspended, fired or indicted by states attorneys general.

Most of these cheating scandals have occurred in predominantly black schools across the nation. At one level, it's easy to understand -- but by no means condone -- the motivation teachers have to cheat. Teachers have families to raise, mortgages, car payments and other financial obligations. Their pay, retention and promotions depend on how well their students perform on standardized tests.

Very often, teachers must deal with an impossible classroom atmosphere in which many, if not most, of the students are disorderly, disobedient and alien and hostile to the education process. Many students pose a significant safety threat. The latest statistics available, published by the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, in a report titled "Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2012," tell us that nationwide between 2007 and 2008, about 145,100 public-school teachers were physically attacked by students, and another 276,700 were threatened with injury.

Should any of this criminal behavior be tolerated? Should unruly students be able to halt the education process? And, a question particularly for black people: Are we in such good educational shape that we can afford to allow some students to make education impossible? A report supported in part by the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, titled "Reducing Suspension among Academically Disengaged Black Males" (http://tinyurl.com/my95jh3), suggests a tolerance for disruptive students.

There are some members of the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP and the National Urban League who attended school during the years I attended (1942-54). During those days, no youngster would have even cursed a teacher, much less assaulted one. One has to wonder why black leaders accept behavior that never would have been tolerated by their parents and teachers. Back then, to use foul language or assault a teacher or any other adult would have resulted in some form of corporal punishment in school or at home or both. Today such discipline would have a teacher or parent jailed. That, in turn, means there is little or no meaningful sanction against unruly or criminal behavior.

No one argues that yesteryear's students were angels. In Philadelphia, where I grew up, students who posed severe disciplinary problems were removed. Daniel Boone School was for unruly boys, and Carmen was for girls. Some people might respond: But what are we going to do with the students kicked out? Whether or not there are resources to help them is not the issue. The critical issue is whether they should be permitted to make education impossible for students who are capable of learning. It's a policy question similar to: What do you do when you have both drunken drivers and sober drivers on the road? The first order of business is to get the drunken drivers off the road. Whether there are resources available to help the drunks is, at best, a secondary issue.

There is little that the political and education establishment will do about the grossly fraudulent education received by many black youngsters, and more money is not the answer. For example, according to findings by Cato Institute's Andrew J. Coulson, Washington, D.C., spends $29,409 per pupil (http://tinyurl.com/mpc82dq). In terms of academic achievement, its students are nearly the nation's worst. The average tuition for a K-12 Catholic school is $9,000, and for a nonsectarian private K-12 school, it is $16,000. A voucher system would empower black parents to remove their children from high-cost and low-quality public schools and enroll them in lower-cost and higher-quality nonpublic schools.

 
Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams

Dr. Williams serves on the faculty of George Mason University as John M. Olin Distinguished Professor of Economics and is the author of 'Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination?' and 'Up from the Projects: An Autobiography.' 
 
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
"LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000
"THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD
"EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941
"FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895
"FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 
"I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock 
"TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 
"EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS

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Codgers Freaking Out John Stossel | Feb 26, 2014

John Stossel

America's most popular cable news host is upset. "Marijuana use, video games and texting (are) creating major social problems," says Bill O'Reilly. "This is an epidemic that will lead to a weaker nation!"

Give me a break.

Crotchety old geezers always complain about "the kids." The Boston Globe frets about "Idle Trophy Kids." The New York Post asks if millennials are "The Worst Generation?" Older folks (my age) complain that young people spend so much time texting each other that they can't communicate. And because they spend hours playing violent video games, violence is up.

Bunk.

It's true that kids today play incredibly violent games like "Halo" and "Grand Theft Auto," but as the games' popularity increased (over the past 20 years), youth violence dropped 55 percent. In Japan, kids spend more time playing violent games, and there's even less violence. And in America, despite media hype, there are fewer school shootings now, not more.

Kids "can't communicate" because they text all the time? Recently, kids invented Facebook, YouTube, Firefox, Groupon, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest and so on. They communicate something .

Inevitably, we older people misunderstand new ways young people do things -- we are frightened by the risks and oblivious to the benefits.

If O'Reilly had been on TV in the '50s, he would have ranted about comic books causing juvenile delinquency. The Senate actually held hearings in which the public was instructed that Superman "embodied sadistic fantasies ... injurious to children ... "

Today O'Reilly opines, "The cyberspace addiction rate among American children is off the charts ... they don't learn coping skills! ... In China, young people are encouraged to compete, be disciplined, live in the real world. Not here."

Even if that were true, what have Chinese young people invented lately? Any companies? What music and art did they compose?

O'Reilly worries about "America going to pot ... If you use any intoxicating agent, your goal is to leave reality. You're not satisfied with your current state of mind, you want to get high, buzzed, blasted, whatever."

I say, so what?

Some people like the sensation of getting "buzzed." Some are not satisfied with their current state of mind. Good. That's what gets people to learn new things.

Altering our minds is a most basic right. We alter our minds -- often for the better -- every time we read a book, fall in love or watch a TV show, including O'Reilly's.

But old people worry that young people are exposed to sexual imagery. It's true the Web brings pornography to children's computers, and that culture is often coarse. When Miley twerks, I cringe.

But again, where's the harm? As reporter Michael Moynihan will point out on my TV show this week, "Over the past 20 or so years, sex has been in everyone's face, yet teen pregnancy dropped by 50 percent."

I wish outraged oldsters remembered how we once laughed at those who were frightened by Elvis Presley.

In 1956, The New York Times said Elvis had "no discernable singing ability." The New York Daily News called his act "animalism that should be confined to dives and bordellos." Even Frank Sinatra said his kind of music is "deplorable, a rancid, smelling aphrodisiac (that) fosters destructive relations in young people."

Somehow, America survived Elvis.

"Moral panics are one of our favorite things," says Moynihan. "If there's nothing to be panicked about, what do you write about?" Being outraged is part of the media circus.

The danger is that the outrage undermines perspective. It creates a false impression of how risky the present is, and it fuels unnecessary, freedom-killing regulations.

Old people always talk about the good old days. But the good old days were not so good. When I was young, more kids were intolerant, racist, sexist and homophobic. They had little knowledge of life beyond their neighborhoods. Today, thanks to the Web and other innovations, life is better, not worse.

 
 
John Stossel

John Stossel

John Stossel is host of "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network. He's the author of "No They Can't: Why Government Fails, but Individuals Succeed." To find out more about John Stossel, visit his site at >johnstossel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com. ©Creators Syndicate
 
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
"LET LOVE LEAD THE WAY" SG-2000
"THE PHOENIX SHALL RISE" SD
"EVEN A MAN WHO IS PURE IN HEART AND SAYS HIS PRAYERS BY NIGHT, MAY BECOME A WOLF WHEN THE WOLFBANE BLOOMS AND THE AUTUMN MOON IS BRIGHT." LT-1941
"FLESH OF MY FLESH; BLOOD OF MY BLOOD; KIN OF MY KIN WHEN SAY COME TO YOU, YOU SHALL CROSS LAND OR SEA TO DO MY BIDDING!" CVTD-1895
"FROM HELL'S HEART I STAB AT THEE, FOR HATE SAKE I SPIT MY LAST BREATH AT THEE" CA-1895 
"I HAVE BEEN, AND ALWAYS SHALL BE YOUR FRIEND" Spock 
"TRICK OR TREAT, TRICK OR TREAT CANDY IS DANDY BUT MURDER, OH MURDER, IS SO SWEET" CRL-2003 
"EYE OF NEWT, AND TOE OF FROG, WOOL OF BAT, AND TONGUE OF DOG ADDER'S FORK, BLIND-WORM'S STING, LIZARD'S LEG, AND OWLET'S WING. FOR A CHARM OF POWERFUL TROUBLE, LIKE A HELL-BROTH BOIL AND BABBLE. DOUBLE, DOUBLE, TOIL AND TROUBLE, FIRE BURN, AND CALDRON BUBBLE" WS

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Alec Baldwin, Drama Queen Michelle Malkin | Feb 26, 2014

Michelle Malkin

Bad boy-turned-bellyacher Alec Baldwin threw a 5,000-word, seven-page pity party for himself in the entertainment media he says he abhors. Hey, what better way for a Hollywood narcissist to protest the attention-starved shallowness of celebrity life than to wallow in it to the bitter end?

The rage-filled actor's bloated face is on the cover of New York magazine this week next to the headline "I Give Up." Inside, his rambling and nutty "as told to" confessional bids adieu to "public life." Baldwin seethes about, well, everything.

He's mad that countless reporters and photographers dared to cover his toxic little outbursts and violent confrontations over the years, because they ruined his "dreams of running for office at some point in the next five years."

He's mad at gays for calling him out on his gay-bashing statements that he either denies or forgets he made. (Oh, and he throws in a reference to an "F-to-M tranny" just to reassure the "Gay Department of Justice" that they're totally wrong about him.)

He's mad that his fellow New Yorkers don't bow down and kiss his ring like they used to, back in the day when they'd stop him on the corner and heap praise on his charitable activities and work as a "great supporter of the arts."

He's mad at MSNBC for not letting him book actress Debra Winger on his ill-fated, short-lived train wreck of a vanity talk show.

He's mad at liberal doyenne Arianna Huffington for an article in the Huffington Post about pimples.

And he's especially mad, mad, mad about how angry and hateful the rest of America has become. "The heart, the arteries of the country are now clogged with hate. The fuel of American political life is hatred," he fumes. It's all the fault, he fulminates, of "Roger Ailes," "Fox News" and "Breitbart."

Funny guy. These complaints are coming, after all, from the hate-clogged hate-monger who called Andrew Breitbart "a festering boil on the anus of public discourse" for exposing rapes and violence at Occupy Wall Street camps -- and who taunted Breitbart's friends after the father of four's tragic death in 2012 by gleefully floating conspiracy theories on Twitter.

Bawling Baldwin can't take it anymore, America, but he sure loves to dish it out.

Remember: Our born-again champion of civility and tolerance is the same rageball who attacked a Starbucks barista he didn't like as a "queen," derided conservative women who identity themselves as "moms," mocked Filipina women as mail-order brides, smeared the entire state of Florida as a "f***ed up parallel universe" and savaged an American Airlines stewardess who told him to put his iPad away before takeoff. "Last flight (with) American," he sneered. "Where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950s find jobs as flight attendants."

This abuser of service workers and serial misogynist's laments for a kinder, gentler America ring hollow. But they're not nearly as hollow as his habitual threats to disappear from public life.

Bloviating Baldwin threatened to move to Canada if George W. Bush won a second term, but he never followed through.

He threatened to quit show biz last fall, but he didn't go anywhere.

He's threatened to quit Twitter at least three times, but he always comes back.

Now he's threatening to decamp from the mean streets of Greenwich Village to Los Angeles, that sanctuary of privacy and oasis of compassion and sincerity, where the baristas will be more servile and the photographers will put down their cameras and toss rose petals at his feet.

Babbling Baldwin says he'll never talk to an American publication about his "personal life" ever again. If only it were true. We all know this drama queen ain't going nowhere. He won't leave the spotlight. He's addicted to fame and dependent on infamy. It's all he has left.

 
 

Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin

Michelle Malkin is the author of "Culture of Corruption: Obama and his Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks & Cronies" (Regnery 2010).

©Creators Syndicate
 
Carl Ray Louk

"FRIENDSHIP NEVER ENDS" SG-1996
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