I have often clashed with my conservative friends as to why I liked the insurance mandate of Obamacare [alas, it went away early this year]. For one thing, how is it different from the Social Security Tax, except it gives […]
Obama
The Deals
There has been some unhappiness among the ‘base’ about President Trump’s recent agreement which might mean the continuation of Obama’s order protecting the Dreamers, those who were undocumented immigrants as children. Excuse me. Mr. Trump was known for writing a […]
An Addendum to the Manifesto: My Youth as a Deficit Hawk – Howard Ahmanson
It occurred to me that during the first period in my life that I was a conservative, which was in my youth, I was motivated mainly by deficit hawkery. I was ten in the year that Nixon ran against Kennedy, […]
The Religious Right Failed to See What Was Coming
We have repeated Francis Schaeffer’s warning about ‘personal peace and affluence’ often at Blue Kennel, but it’s time to do it again. He declared, back about 1970, that the ‘Silent Majority’, a term Nixon had begun to use, was composed […]
Andrew Sullivan on Trump and Tyranny: A Response
Andrew Sullivan, having retired from blogging and writing after first giving us the idea of same sex marriage and then being lambasted by his followers for wanting to be tolerant to their enemies who lost over that particular issue, has […]
Obama’s “allergy to antithesis” strikes again?
Please read “WaPo columnist slams ‘dry,’ ‘detached’ Obama” in response to my previous BlueKennel post “Obama and the Allergy to Antithesis“.
The Midterm Turnout Problem
It is well known that important constituencies, especially those for the Democratic Party, have not been turning out in ‘midterm’ elections in the last few years. In fact, a New York Times writer has endorsed eliminating ‘midterms’ for that very […]
The Adams Map: A Different Spectrum, A Challenge
Michael Adams’ 2005 book, American Backlash: The Untold Story of Social Change in the United States, got little attention in the States. In fact, since he is a Canadian author, only used copies can be found on the regular amazon.com, […]
Allergy to Antithesis, Yet Again
The New York Times has just done a story on how Obama is not getting along well with the Democrats in Congress. To quote it: “In one sense, Mr. Obama’s response was a reminder of what made him such an appealing […]
The Closer to Home, The Farther from the People: The Media have Turned the Founding Fathers’ World Upside Down
In an essay in the recent book The Beholden State [pages 96-101], William Voegeli, of the Claremont Institute, writes about the scandal in the Los Angeles borough of Bell, where the city officers were found to be ridiculously overpaid. He questions […]