Tuesday September 7, 2010     Last Update: 6 hr ago

Articles for April 2010

Select:
Article Published Author Rating Comments

Sometimes, There's Just No Right Thing To Do

The New York Times reports a rather sad tale of a lawsuit between the University of Arizona and a small Indian tribe called the Havasupai who lived at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Tribe members suffered from an unusually high incidence of diabetes wh...		 Apr 30, 10 Will Offensicht 0 1

Public Watchdogs Ogle Privates

The New York Daily News tells us on what's really going on in government agencies who're supposed to guard our financial markets against fraud, deceit, and the next boom-and-bust cycle: The country's top financial watchdogs turned out to be horndogs w...		 Apr 29, 10 Will Offensicht 0 1

Obama Bites the Wealthy Hands that Feed Him

As long as there has been politics, there have been political betrayals. The unfulfilled dream of every captain of industry is to find a politician who is dishonest enough to accept bribes, but honest enough to stay bought long enough for the buyer to g...		 Apr 28, 10 Petrarch 0 2

Reparations for Slavery: Two Beers, a Conversation, and That's It

The New York Times article "Ending the Slavery Blame Game" started: Thanks to an unlikely confluence of history and genetics — the fact that he is African-American and president — Barack Obama has a unique opportunity to reshape the debate over one of...		 Apr 27, 10 Will Offensicht 0 1

Arizona, Illegals, and the Rights of States

As generally seems to happen when things don't go his way, Mr. Obama got all huffy last week when Arizona passed a law making clear what should be obvious: illegal immigrants are, um, illegal, and police should arrest them as they arrest other lawbreaker...		 Apr 26, 10 Petrarch 0 14

Brain-Dead Mixing of Science and Politics

In "Trawling the Brain," Science News reports the latest instance of peer-reviewed scientific gimmicry: The 18-inch-long Atlantic salmon lay perfectly still for its brain scan. Emotional pictures —a triumphant young girl just out of a somersault, a d...		 Apr 23, 10 Will Offensicht 0 3

Mother Earth Makes a Volcanic Point

Ever since the interestingly-named Sen. Gaylord Nelson founded the very first Earth Day in 1970, that most politically correct of holidays has been used as an opportunity to pound home the dogma that our planet has much in common with Humpty Dumpty - eve...		 Apr 22, 10 Kermit Frosch 0 4

The Lesson of Jihad Jane

In years past, your humble correspondent traveled the airways of America and the world with some regularity. No longer! These days, two trips per annum is a busy year, and for good reason: where once the romance of travel and the skies held allure, now...		 Apr 21, 10 Hobbes 0 5

Unemployment Insurance: A Permanent Entitlement?

The Washington Post recently touched off an intense argument amongst the Scragged editors. The WaPo framed the question thus: Millions of Americans have been forced to rely on unemployment payments for extended periods as the nation struggles through...		 Apr 20, 10 Will Offensicht 0 9

Obama Torpedoes Same-Sex "Marriage"

Americans are the most tolerant and generous people on earth and have been from the founding days of the Revolution. The Declaration of Independence can be neatly summed up in one phrase: "Quit pushing us around!" - and as a result, Americans generally ...		 Apr 19, 10 Petrarch 0 17

The Forbidden Silver Bullet Against Infection

Mankind has known for a hundred years that there are two basic mechanisms by which you get sick - you can be infected by bacteria or you can be infected by viruses. Bacteria are living cells which reproduce themselves; most bacteria multiply by splittin...		 Apr 16, 10 Will Offensicht 0 9

Our Debauched Electorate 3

Political corruption has been with us since the beginning of the Republic, and charging your opponents with corruption is still a powerful cudgel. Nancy Pelosi quite rightly clobbered the Republican "Culture of Corruption" in 2006; now the worm has turn...		 Apr 15, 10 Petrarch 0 3

How the Chinese Government Creates Jobs

 As soon as Mao Zedong's Communist army defeated the forces of Chiang Kai-Shek in 1949, Mao led the effort to establish a communist society throughout China. His blend of Marxist-Leninist theory, military strategy, and detailed economic policies is know...		 Apr 14, 10 Will Offensicht 0 3

Mean Lies and Scam

As every American has been reminded daily for well over a year, we are blessed to be ruled by an historic prodigy who is by far the most brilliant and qualified individual ever to set foot in the Oval Office. Not merely the greatest politician, orator, ...		 Apr 13, 10 Hobbes 0 2

Mining for More Bureaucrats

The New York Times reports that there were no survivors from the recent explosion at a mine in Montcoal, WV. In their reaction to this unhappy event, the Times reveals their view that bureaucratic regulators are always cloaked in virtue whereas busine...		 Apr 12, 10 Will Offensicht 0 7

Our Debauched Electorate 2

In an era when the ruling Democrats openly claim that they know better how to run your life than you do, when they say that you need to "siddown and shuddup", and that the whole point of their legislative agenda is to "control the people," it's hard not ...		 Apr 9, 10 Petrarch 0 2

Our Government's Policies Promote Obesity

Food labels and the issue of what constitutes a healthy diet have been contentions ever since the Food and Drug Administration was given the power to regulate what businesses could say about their products. Whenever an advertiser wants to say that eatin...		 Apr 8, 10 Will Offensicht 0 1

Hold the Mushroom (Cloud)

The New York Times exultantly reports: President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons... It eliminates much of the ambiguity th...		 Apr 7, 10 Petrarch 0 3

What Price for Jobs? 1

Although there are a few signs that unemployment may have peaked - the Wall Street Journal says that about 162,000 more people were hired than were laid off in March - the way back to former employment levels will be long, hard, and slow. Knowing what i...		 Apr 6, 10 Will Offensicht 0 11

Our Debauched Electorate 1

 As far back as we can recall, every election brings grousing that the two parties are equally corrupt and generally pretty much the same, offering only choices between Lousy and Lousier. We've made the same complaint ourselves. That is not likely to...		 Apr 5, 10 Petrarch 0 7

Decline in America's Factories

Why is American manufacturing in the sorry, sad shape it's in? About a year ago some associates and I came up with an idea for a product to be manufactured here in the good old US of A. We drew up our prototype requirements and started searching for ...		 Apr 2, 10 Fennoman 0 17

The Government-Assisted Productivity Scam

From right after World War II until the mid-sixties, American manufacturing firms ruled the world. There were no Japanese cars on American roads and very few foreign cars of any kind until the late 1960's. A major reason our firms did so well was tha...		 Apr 1, 10 Will Offensicht 0 4