Jun 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
Actor Kelsey Grammer, star of NBC's Frasier, is "a pro-Bush guy," he declared on June 18 edition of Fox & Friends on FNC:Steve Doocey: "You know, Kelsey our country has been through so much over the last year, in particular the war in Iraq. A lot of Hollywood celebrities anti-war, anti-Bush, but where do you come down?"
Grammer: "I'm a supporter. I've been a pro-Bush guy for some time now. I think he's got a clear message; I think he's got a conscientious message, and I think he has some real courage. So it's just nice to see in a President and I'm actually a fan."
Doocey: "What about, you know the hearings up on Capitol Hill right now looking into whether or not the CIA shaded the intelligence or if the Bush Administration ginned up the crowd just to go to war. What do you think of that?"
Grammer: "I think it's a nice political ploy actually at this point. I mean I think everybody else saw the same information; they all said 'Yeah, we gotta take this guy out.' And frankly I think it was important to deal with him now so that whoever is the next president doesn't have this guy to deal with as well. It's been what, three administrations now? You know." [Hat Tip: MRC]
Jun 22, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Jun 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
The ever clever Mark Steyn, makes an astute observation on Hillary Clinton's new book:...Hillary's constituency doesn't want soul-baring--that's playing on Ken Starr terms. They want dullness--the dullness that reassures them that Hillary, once you dig her out from the cigars and Gap dresses of posterity, is still the serious thinker and feminist icon they told us she was in 1992.
...Hillary's fans will buy the book, open Chapter One, and read, ''I wasn't born a first lady or a senator. I wasn't born a Democrat. I wasn't born a lawyer or an advocate for women's rights and human rights. I wasn't born a wife or mother . . . '' and think, well, that's just like the early bits of the Old Testament, all the begetting, or in this case all the things she wasn't begot as, so I'll just skip ahead to Chapter Two, and I'll bet it's really crackling along by now.
And Chapter Two begins: ''What you don't learn from your mother, you learn from the world' is a saying I once heard from the Masai tribe in Kenya.'' And you think, well, isn't that just wonderfully diverse, and she heard it from an actual tribe in Kenya! Any tribesman in particular? Or did they all yell it out in unison as her motorcade passed by? Either way, it's the sort of soothing multicultural sentiment that separates an enlightened progressive from rabid knuckle-dragging redneck Clinton-haters, and that's all you need to know. So you put the book up on the shelf and never open it ever again. [Mark Steyn, Sun Times, "Hillary yawner never gets to the good part", June 15, 2003]
Jun 20, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From Cox and Forkum:
Related: Learning from the Mistakes of Oslo
Jun 19, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
From the UK's Telegraph:
Iran is recruiting top Iraqi weapons scientists to join a dangerous brain drain from Baghdad as international concern grows about Teheran's clandestine arms programme. The pro-Iranian Badr Brigade, an Iraqi Islamic militia, is helping scientists to travel through tribal areas north east of Baghdad and across the border for meetings with senior military and regime figures in Teheran, The Telegraph has learnt....Iran wants to switch from liquid to solid fuels to improve the performance of its long-range Shahab missiles, which may soon be able to reach Europe.
Last week Iran barred United Nations inspectors from taking samples from a suspect nuclear plant, heightening fears that the regime is secretly preparing to make enriched uranium, the crucial raw material for nuclear weapons. Donald Rumsfeld, the American defence secretary, issued a warning that Iran was actively working to develop a bomb... [The Telegraph, "Iran recruits Saddam's scientists to build long-range missile", June 15, 2003]
Jun 17, 2003 | Dollars & Crosses
William F. Hammond in the Sun on Medicaid in NYC:Many--maybe even most--of the elderly patients using [Medicaid] benefits are not poor in the usual sense. They typically have comfortable houses and late-model cars. They might own profitable businesses. And they may be preparing to leave hundreds of thousands or even million of dollars to their children when they die. But if their long-term expenses exceed their cash flow--which is not uncommon, even for the well off--they can be considered "medically needy" and qualify for Medicaid coverage. And some very wealthy people, with the help of lawyers who specialize in "estate planning," are able to shift their money into trust funds controlled by their heirs, minimizing what they have to contribute toward their own care....
As a result, fully 78% of nursing home residents are Medicaid recipients, even though the elderly, as a group, are much wealthier than average. Many experts on long-term care, including operators of nursing homes, consider the situation a scandal. [2003/06/16]
