The Rant

Bob: AARP may not represent the views of young americans and screws up on elder issues occasionally such as prescription drug benefits (non sequitur). This asshole has set up a counter organization professing to represent the elders (over 50) of america. See this great article before you get sucked in. Look at his credentials. Charles W. Jarvis is Chairman and Chief Executive of USA Next and United Seniors Association (USA). USA is the 1.5 million-plus national network of grassroots activists dedicated to Uniting the Generations for America’s FutureTM. USA works intensively to expand Economic Freedom, Health Freedom and Retirement and Investment Freedom for all Americans at every age and every stage in life. Charlie Jarvis is widely respected as a businessman, grassroots strategist and policy expert with a national reputation. He has appeared on many programs, including Fox’s Your World with Neil Cavuto, Hardball with Chris Matthews, MSNBC Live, CNN’s Inside Politics, Hannity and Col

posted by Bob Clasen from Wall Stree Journal February 16, 2005 9:12am ANKARA DISPATCH The Sick Man of Europe--Again Islamism and leftism add up to anti-American madness in Turkey. BY ROBERT L. POLLOCK Wednesday, February 16, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST ANKARA, Turkey--Several years ago I attended an exhibition in Istanbul. The theme was local art from the era of the country's last military coup (1980). But the artists seemed a lot more concerned with the injustices of global capitalism than the fate of Turkish democracy. In fact, to call the works leftist caricatures--many featured fat capitalists with Uncle Sam hats and emaciated workers--would have been an understatement. As one astute local reviewer put it (I quote from memory): "This shows that Turkish artists were willing to abase themselves voluntarily in ways that Soviet artists refused even at the height of Stalin's oppression." That exhibition came to mind amid all the recent gnashing of teeth in the U.S. over the qu

posted by Bob Clasen Andrew Sullivan in Times OnLine http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1481651,00.html ________________________________ Comment: Andrew Sullivan: The bubbling UN cauldron under a shaky western lid The sight of Paul Volcker lumbering amiably towards microphones is not one to set the pulse racing. His most exciting achievement as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board was to grind down American inflation in the 1970s and early 1980s. When he was picked to head the independent commission into alleged corruption and abuses in the United Nations oil for food programme in Iraq neoconservative hearts sank. Would he bore the institution into submission? Or was he too chummy with the establishment types who love the UN? But Volcker surprised. His report was not a whitewash. It even occasioned the usually placid Kofi Annan into declaring — via a spokesman, of course — that he was “shocked” at the report’s revelations. Key among the conclusions: Benon Sevan, the directo

posted by Bob Clasen from the San Diego Tribune By Robert J. Caldwell February 13, 2005 North Korea's stunning proclamation that it possesses nuclear weapons and is withdrawing from the six-party negotiations intended to halt its nuclear program is unquestionably a scary moment for the world. That's exactly what those who rule the world's most frighteningly totalitarian communist state intended. All the more reason, then, for the United States and North Korea's neighbors to react, first, by resolving that illegal, provocative behavior will not be rewarded. North Korea is a signatory nation to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which forbids the spread of nuclear weapons. In 1994, North Korea also signed the Agreed Framework, a bilateral pact with the United States, which required the North Koreans to freeze their nuclear program in exchange for energy assistance to their impoverished economy. Yet, North Korea abruptly withdrew from the NPT in 2002 and expelled inspec