Switzerland’s lower house of Parliament voted 123-63 against the measure [to let Swiss banks otherwise violate Swiss banking laws to give up data demanded by the US], which would have enabled many of the Alpine nation’s banks to sidestep the Swiss banking secrecy laws and start handing information to the US Department of Justice about any past help they may have given to Americans hiding undeclared wealth in Swiss accounts.
Those lawmakers were worried about, among other things,
I’ve posted this annually; this year with a modification.
Enjoy this holiday. Take the time to kick back, relax from the hard work you’ve been doing, and just goof off for a bit.
While you’re doing that, though, do something else, also. Invite that veteran in your neighborhood, who came back from his service wounded or maimed, and his or her family, to your celebration. Invite the family in your neighborhood whose veteran was killed in his or her service to your celebration. They need the break and the relaxation and the support, also. And they’ve earned your respect and remembrance.
Mr Gingrich pretty well nails it.
h/t Power Line
This blogger hopes for increasing prosperity for all in the new year just begun. Following are some additional thoughts, from those better than I.
Dinner was made for eating, not for talking.
–William Makepeace ThackerayNew Year’s Resolution: to tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.
–James AgateThose who gave thee a body, furnished it with weakness; but He who gave thee Soul, armed thee with resolution. Employ it, and thou art wise; be wise, and thou art happy.
–Akhenaton
Or at least what passes for it in my house, with my very patient wife.
A fish walks into a bar. The bartender says, “What do you want?”
The fish croaks, “Water.”A man walks into a bar and orders six whiskies. He lines them up in a row and knocks back the first, third, and fifth glasses. Then he gets up to leave. “Don”t you want the others?” asks the barman. “You”ve only had three of your whiskies.”
“Best not,” replies the man. “My doctor said it was only okay to have the odd drink.”
Here’re a couple of charts that illustrate the impact on American joblessness caused by Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama’s economic policies. They’re from an article last spring by Dan Mitchell, writing at The Center for Freedom and Prosperity.
This graph shows the degree of long-term joblessness extant in our present economy.
For almost the entire post-war period, long-term joblessness had been stable, if noisy, around a low rate in the range of 10%-15% of total unemployed. But throughout the administration of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama, this long-term unemployment travesty has skyrocketed into the 45% range—nearly half of all of our unemployed in the present economic dislocation have been out of work long-term—for six months or more. Larry Summers, ex of Obama’s National Economic Council suggests a reason:
My book, A Conservative’s Treatise on American Government: A Brief Discussion of what a Government, Subordinate to the Sovereign People, Must Do, has been published, and it can be found, among other places, at Amazon.com and at Barnes & Noble. Links also can be found nearby in the column to the right and on the Books page.
Friday, President Obama announced a modification to his HHS Department’s mandate that all employers provide health insurance policies that include free contraceptive services—which include contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients—including those employers with religious objections to this sort of thing. One version of his announcement is here. In sum, the modification allows religious institutions like hospitals and charities to opt out of the requirement, but if they do, their insurance provider must itself and separately provide those services to the institution’s women employees—still free of charge. Does this solve the problem? Where to begin….
As President Obama pretends to channel his inner Christian and, in doing so, distorts Jesus’ message, a friend reminds me of another passage from the Bible. Ruth 2:1-17 has many lessons, but one of them concerns the charity of Boaz toward Ruth. Within this lesson is another. Boaz had productive fields, else he could not have let Ruth glean from them—there would have been nothing to glean.
This new and old lesson is understood by many in our own time. Isabel Paterson has also written about the relationship between charity and production. In her The God of the Machine, she wrote
We see this from the National Journal [emphasis added]:
…the State of the Union address both one of the great opportunities for any president running for another term and one of the best advantages that an incumbent enjoys over a challenger.
Start with the setting: the ornate chamber of the House of Representatives, where so much history has been made. Add in the cheering members who reach out to touch the president as he strides down the aisle and the speaker of the House forced to sit attentively behind him during the speech, showing respect for the leader of the other party. Then factor in the audience arrayed before the president—diplomats, Supreme Court justices, and uniformed leaders of the armed forces. And don’t forget the audience outside the chamber: For his first two State of the Union speeches, Obama was watched by 48 million Americans in 2010 and 43 million in 2011.