When is a government payment to someone poor really a handout to someone rich? It happens when the government gives money to the working poor because they earn so little that they qualify for food stamps, medical assistance or other aid to the poor. Wal-Mart has perfected this scam. Wal-Mart workers collectively receive $2.66 billion […]
Cultural imperatives can transform slowly and subtly without anyone being aware of the change. But sometimes we see something in an old movie or TV show that depicts attitudes or conditions that have changed so much that it makes us realize how different things are from “the good old days,” “our salad days” and “back […]
On the surface it seems inconsistent that the same country, Germany, that submitted Greece to such harsh punishment is opening its arms so generously to Syrian refugees, agreeing to take as many as 800,000, or one percent of its own population. But it makes perfect sense once you accept that a deeply Protestant—perhaps Lutheran—streak still […]
Read More… from Germany does the right thing for Syrian refugees and for the German economy
Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz is once again at the forefront of a movement to shut down the federal government by not passing a spending bill as a means to inflict his harsh social vision on the country. And once again the threatened action will not achieve its results. Two years ago, Senator Cruz convinced […]
Most candidates use the same speaking style, starting with the organization of their speeches into distinct sections in which they talk about one or a few related issues. Each section will handle the issues using similar rhetorical and syntactical devices: employing more words than are necessary; using anecdotes instead of statistics; hedging bets with such […]
Read More… from Is the key to Trump’s success that his speaking style resembles standup comedy?
“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine,” is what Humphrey Bogart’s character says when his long-lost love, played by Ingrid Bergman, walks into a bar in “Casablanca.” I have a variation for Andrew Ross Sorkin, who writes the “Dealbook” column for the New York Times. […]
There’s a scary series of ads on broadcast and cable television lately that warn us that the federal government is about to make it more expensive to get financial planning, make it impossible for people to use the trusted financial planner who has helped them reach their financial goals for years, and may even leave […]
When Senator Robert Menendez says that the Obama Administration should have held out for a better deal with Iran, he forgets that every day of negotiation without a deal was one more day that Iran could work on gaining a nuclear weapons capability. He also forgets that the Iranians and Americans weren’t the only ones […]
Reading “Robot Weapons: What’s the Harm?” by Jerry Kaplan, who supposedly is a university teacher of the ethics of artificial intelligence, made me wonder what the heck does the term “ethics of artificial intelligence” mean? I would think that artificial intelligence—like any other technology—has no ethics, which is to say, the ethics of using artificial […]
It was hard not to come away from the first Republican debate with the disorientating feeling that you had just seen week one of “American Idol: Republican Presidential Edition.” The similarities between the Republican pre-primary presidential campaign and a reality TV show start with the candidates. Like most performers on the reality shows that are […]
Read More… from Sarah Palin endorses Trump: Reality TV celebrity buzz or political news?