Undeterred by the persistently high unemployment rate and slow economic growth, Obama pledges to invest tall stacks of money on "infrastructure." This includes such cutting-edge investments as additional paved trails in local parks -- presumably to ignite the sure-to-boom pedestrian path market. This from the man who also plans to prescribe pain pills instead of covering expensive medical procedures. Basically, in 21st century America we will meander through the world's most intricate system of hike-and-bike paths in a drug-induced daze until we accidentally fall into the abyss. Except it won't be
the abyss, just a large hole left from another public works project that was left unfinished because the nation's finances fell into the actual abyss. This is what Obama means by "winning the future."
Egypt makes Mitt Romney look good -- at least compared to other Republican presidential hopefuls.
As Egypt's pro-democracy movement showed its first peaceful signs of life, there was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee telling a Knesset meeting that the anti-Mubarak protests "could threaten the world." He demonstrated his grasp of the fragility of the moment by joining right-wing Israeli officials and activists at the laying of a cornerstone for new Jewish housing on contested ground in East Jerusalem.
There was former UN ambassador John Bolton likening the "idealistic student demonstrators" to hippies ("We are not on the verge of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius in Egypt if only the demonstrators get their way"), ridiculing those who would "toss away lightly" the upside of standing by our man Mubarak "against the promise, the hope, the aspiration for sweetness and light and democratic government."
It took former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a week to say anything about Egypt, and when she did -- speaking in Reno, Nevada to 2,500 hunters at the annual convention of Safari Club International - her angle was what Egypt meant for Sarah Palin, victim. She said that a recent call by a Washington Post columnist for journalists to ignore her "sounds good, because there's a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can't wait not to get blamed for it -- at least for a month."
If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) broke her radio silence on the Egyptian crisis during its first three weeks, whatever she said was under Google's radar.
So simply by echoing President Obama's call for a managed transition in Egypt -- the kind of nonpartisan support during international crises that a White House once could count on -- former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney now leads the pack. In a CNN interview with Piers Morgan, Romney's only misstep was his clumsy attempt to distinguish between calling Mubarak a dictator (which he wouldn't), and calling him a "monarch-like" figure (which he would), which unfortunately recalled his clumsier attempt to tap-dance away from the mandate that everyone buy health insurance that he put at the heart of his own state plan.
Romney's vulnerability on the signature Republican issue -- he's the godfather of Obamacare! -- has his staffers tearing their hair out trying to write a better answer than the one he's giving. Compared to his flip-flops on abortion, "don't ask, don't tell," gun control, campaign finance and immigration, his touting the Massachusetts mandate as "a model for getting everybody insured" is proving way trickier to explain to GOP primary voters.
But there's another issue that could well steal center stage from Romneycare: religion.
On February 24, previews begin on Broadway for The Book of Mormon. A musical by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as well as Robert Lopez, co-writer of Avenue Q, the show is a spinoff of a 2003 episode of South Park called "All About the Mormons?"
Even within the South Park tradition of making savage fun of everything, including other religious denominations, "All About the Mormons?" is particularly brutal. It basically says that you have to be dumb or crazy to believe the foundational story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Joseph Smith translating ancient glyphs on golden plates that an angel led him to), or to believe the sacred story told on those plates (the resurrected Jesus preaching to the Indian descendants of a pre-Columbian civilization whose founders emigrated from Jerusalem to America).
In 2007, Romney gave a speech about religious liberty, religious tolerance and the role that faith would play in his presidency. It hit many of the same notes as John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech about religion, politics and his Catholic faith. In it, Romney refused to "distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction.... That I will not do." Like President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, Romney said in his speech that he believes "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." To go beyond that and discuss LDS doctrine, he said, "would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."
That speech put the religious issue to bed for the 2008 primary season, and it's likely that he'll cite and recycle it at key moments in his campaign for 2012. But I wonder whether the high-profile skewering of his religion on Broadway will require some new Qs & As in his briefing book. The easy Q is what he thinks of the attack; the A to that is the wisdom of the First Amendment. The hard Q is whether he believes that the story of the golden plates and what was written on them is literally true -- factually accurate history.
Perhaps he can just repeat what he said in 2007 and rule the question constitutionally out of bounds. But Broadway may raise the bar on what his answer needs to accomplish, both for fundamentalists who are looking for someone more electable than Sarah Palin, and for more secular voters who want to know what Romney's made of and might be disappointed by his ducking.
At the end of the "All About the Mormons?" episode, Gary, a Mormon kid whose family moved to South Park, says this:
"Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don't care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that's stupid, I still choose to believe in it."
Mitt Romney doesn't agree with Gary, so that tack isn't an option. Still, just as he desperately needs a better answer to the mandate issue, the pop culture assault on what he holds to be true may require upgrading his answer on the religious issue to version 2.0.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft company Undeterred by the persistently high unemployment rate and slow economic growth, Obama pledges to invest tall stacks of money on "infrastructure." This includes such cutting-edge investments as additional paved trails in local parks -- presumably to ignite the sure-to-boom pedestrian path market. This from the man who also plans to prescribe pain pills instead of covering expensive medical procedures. Basically, in 21st century America we will meander through the world's most intricate system of hike-and-bike paths in a drug-induced daze until we accidentally fall into the abyss. Except it won't be
the abyss, just a large hole left from another public works project that was left unfinished because the nation's finances fell into the actual abyss. This is what Obama means by "winning the future."
Egypt makes Mitt Romney look good -- at least compared to other Republican presidential hopefuls.
As Egypt's pro-democracy movement showed its first peaceful signs of life, there was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee telling a Knesset meeting that the anti-Mubarak protests "could threaten the world." He demonstrated his grasp of the fragility of the moment by joining right-wing Israeli officials and activists at the laying of a cornerstone for new Jewish housing on contested ground in East Jerusalem.
There was former UN ambassador John Bolton likening the "idealistic student demonstrators" to hippies ("We are not on the verge of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius in Egypt if only the demonstrators get their way"), ridiculing those who would "toss away lightly" the upside of standing by our man Mubarak "against the promise, the hope, the aspiration for sweetness and light and democratic government."
It took former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a week to say anything about Egypt, and when she did -- speaking in Reno, Nevada to 2,500 hunters at the annual convention of Safari Club International - her angle was what Egypt meant for Sarah Palin, victim. She said that a recent call by a Washington Post columnist for journalists to ignore her "sounds good, because there's a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can't wait not to get blamed for it -- at least for a month."
If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) broke her radio silence on the Egyptian crisis during its first three weeks, whatever she said was under Google's radar.
So simply by echoing President Obama's call for a managed transition in Egypt -- the kind of nonpartisan support during international crises that a White House once could count on -- former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney now leads the pack. In a CNN interview with Piers Morgan, Romney's only misstep was his clumsy attempt to distinguish between calling Mubarak a dictator (which he wouldn't), and calling him a "monarch-like" figure (which he would), which unfortunately recalled his clumsier attempt to tap-dance away from the mandate that everyone buy health insurance that he put at the heart of his own state plan.
Romney's vulnerability on the signature Republican issue -- he's the godfather of Obamacare! -- has his staffers tearing their hair out trying to write a better answer than the one he's giving. Compared to his flip-flops on abortion, "don't ask, don't tell," gun control, campaign finance and immigration, his touting the Massachusetts mandate as "a model for getting everybody insured" is proving way trickier to explain to GOP primary voters.
But there's another issue that could well steal center stage from Romneycare: religion.
On February 24, previews begin on Broadway for The Book of Mormon. A musical by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as well as Robert Lopez, co-writer of Avenue Q, the show is a spinoff of a 2003 episode of South Park called "All About the Mormons?"
Even within the South Park tradition of making savage fun of everything, including other religious denominations, "All About the Mormons?" is particularly brutal. It basically says that you have to be dumb or crazy to believe the foundational story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Joseph Smith translating ancient glyphs on golden plates that an angel led him to), or to believe the sacred story told on those plates (the resurrected Jesus preaching to the Indian descendants of a pre-Columbian civilization whose founders emigrated from Jerusalem to America).
In 2007, Romney gave a speech about religious liberty, religious tolerance and the role that faith would play in his presidency. It hit many of the same notes as John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech about religion, politics and his Catholic faith. In it, Romney refused to "distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction.... That I will not do." Like President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, Romney said in his speech that he believes "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." To go beyond that and discuss LDS doctrine, he said, "would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."
That speech put the religious issue to bed for the 2008 primary season, and it's likely that he'll cite and recycle it at key moments in his campaign for 2012. But I wonder whether the high-profile skewering of his religion on Broadway will require some new Qs & As in his briefing book. The easy Q is what he thinks of the attack; the A to that is the wisdom of the First Amendment. The hard Q is whether he believes that the story of the golden plates and what was written on them is literally true -- factually accurate history.
Perhaps he can just repeat what he said in 2007 and rule the question constitutionally out of bounds. But Broadway may raise the bar on what his answer needs to accomplish, both for fundamentalists who are looking for someone more electable than Sarah Palin, and for more secular voters who want to know what Romney's made of and might be disappointed by his ducking.
At the end of the "All About the Mormons?" episode, Gary, a Mormon kid whose family moved to South Park, says this:
"Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don't care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that's stupid, I still choose to believe in it."
Mitt Romney doesn't agree with Gary, so that tack isn't an option. Still, just as he desperately needs a better answer to the mandate issue, the pop culture assault on what he holds to be true may require upgrading his answer on the religious issue to version 2.0.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
bench craft company>
Read our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft company[reefeed]
bench craft company
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft companyUndeterred by the persistently high unemployment rate and slow economic growth, Obama pledges to invest tall stacks of money on "infrastructure." This includes such cutting-edge investments as additional paved trails in local parks -- presumably to ignite the sure-to-boom pedestrian path market. This from the man who also plans to prescribe pain pills instead of covering expensive medical procedures. Basically, in 21st century America we will meander through the world's most intricate system of hike-and-bike paths in a drug-induced daze until we accidentally fall into the abyss. Except it won't be
the abyss, just a large hole left from another public works project that was left unfinished because the nation's finances fell into the actual abyss. This is what Obama means by "winning the future."
Egypt makes Mitt Romney look good -- at least compared to other Republican presidential hopefuls.
As Egypt's pro-democracy movement showed its first peaceful signs of life, there was former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee telling a Knesset meeting that the anti-Mubarak protests "could threaten the world." He demonstrated his grasp of the fragility of the moment by joining right-wing Israeli officials and activists at the laying of a cornerstone for new Jewish housing on contested ground in East Jerusalem.
There was former UN ambassador John Bolton likening the "idealistic student demonstrators" to hippies ("We are not on the verge of the dawning of the Age of Aquarius in Egypt if only the demonstrators get their way"), ridiculing those who would "toss away lightly" the upside of standing by our man Mubarak "against the promise, the hope, the aspiration for sweetness and light and democratic government."
It took former Alaska governor Sarah Palin a week to say anything about Egypt, and when she did -- speaking in Reno, Nevada to 2,500 hunters at the annual convention of Safari Club International - her angle was what Egypt meant for Sarah Palin, victim. She said that a recent call by a Washington Post columnist for journalists to ignore her "sounds good, because there's a lot of chaos in Cairo, and I can't wait not to get blamed for it -- at least for a month."
If Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) broke her radio silence on the Egyptian crisis during its first three weeks, whatever she said was under Google's radar.
So simply by echoing President Obama's call for a managed transition in Egypt -- the kind of nonpartisan support during international crises that a White House once could count on -- former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney now leads the pack. In a CNN interview with Piers Morgan, Romney's only misstep was his clumsy attempt to distinguish between calling Mubarak a dictator (which he wouldn't), and calling him a "monarch-like" figure (which he would), which unfortunately recalled his clumsier attempt to tap-dance away from the mandate that everyone buy health insurance that he put at the heart of his own state plan.
Romney's vulnerability on the signature Republican issue -- he's the godfather of Obamacare! -- has his staffers tearing their hair out trying to write a better answer than the one he's giving. Compared to his flip-flops on abortion, "don't ask, don't tell," gun control, campaign finance and immigration, his touting the Massachusetts mandate as "a model for getting everybody insured" is proving way trickier to explain to GOP primary voters.
But there's another issue that could well steal center stage from Romneycare: religion.
On February 24, previews begin on Broadway for The Book of Mormon. A musical by South Park creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as well as Robert Lopez, co-writer of Avenue Q, the show is a spinoff of a 2003 episode of South Park called "All About the Mormons?"
Even within the South Park tradition of making savage fun of everything, including other religious denominations, "All About the Mormons?" is particularly brutal. It basically says that you have to be dumb or crazy to believe the foundational story of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Joseph Smith translating ancient glyphs on golden plates that an angel led him to), or to believe the sacred story told on those plates (the resurrected Jesus preaching to the Indian descendants of a pre-Columbian civilization whose founders emigrated from Jerusalem to America).
In 2007, Romney gave a speech about religious liberty, religious tolerance and the role that faith would play in his presidency. It hit many of the same notes as John F. Kennedy's 1960 speech about religion, politics and his Catholic faith. In it, Romney refused to "distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction.... That I will not do." Like President Obama at the National Prayer Breakfast last week, Romney said in his speech that he believes "that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind." To go beyond that and discuss LDS doctrine, he said, "would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."
That speech put the religious issue to bed for the 2008 primary season, and it's likely that he'll cite and recycle it at key moments in his campaign for 2012. But I wonder whether the high-profile skewering of his religion on Broadway will require some new Qs & As in his briefing book. The easy Q is what he thinks of the attack; the A to that is the wisdom of the First Amendment. The hard Q is whether he believes that the story of the golden plates and what was written on them is literally true -- factually accurate history.
Perhaps he can just repeat what he said in 2007 and rule the question constitutionally out of bounds. But Broadway may raise the bar on what his answer needs to accomplish, both for fundamentalists who are looking for someone more electable than Sarah Palin, and for more secular voters who want to know what Romney's made of and might be disappointed by his ducking.
At the end of the "All About the Mormons?" episode, Gary, a Mormon kid whose family moved to South Park, says this:
"Look, maybe us Mormons do believe in crazy stories that make absolutely no sense, and maybe Joseph Smith did make it all up, but I have a great life, and a great family, and I have the Book of Mormon to thank for that. The truth is, I don't care if Joseph Smith made it all up, because what the church teaches now is loving your family, being nice and helping people. And even though people in this town might think that's stupid, I still choose to believe in it."
Mitt Romney doesn't agree with Gary, so that tack isn't an option. Still, just as he desperately needs a better answer to the mandate issue, the pop culture assault on what he holds to be true may require upgrading his answer on the religious issue to version 2.0.
This is my column from The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles. You can read more of my columns here, and e-mail me there if you'd like.
bench craft company
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft company
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft company bench craft company bench craft company
bench craft company bench craft companyRead our PlayStation 3 news of EU PlayStation Store update 9th Feb.
Monterona told Arab News in an email that he has received several messages from jailed OFWs asking for assistance. One such message was from Farouq Hadji Malik Bayabao, who claimed that he and his fellow inmates had been heavily beaten ...
On Sean Hannity's program Monday night, pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group of Iowa Republican caucus-goers, gauging their reaction of President Barack Obama's Sunday afternoon interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly. ...
bench craft company Personal finance is MUCH too large a topic to be covered in one article, so I'm writing a personal finance series to help explain some of the basics for the true, absolute, complete beginner. There will be articles geared toward beginners on stocks, bonds, mutual funds, IRAs, 401ks, credit card interest, asset allocation, home loans and more. There is no specific order in which the articles should be read, but since many aspects of personal finance are interrelated, I will try to include links in each article to other pertinent articles. I will also update this article with links to the new ones as they're published, so please check back frequently! I will try to address common beginner questions and misconceptions that I read on personal finance forums, and if readers have questions I encourage you to contact me with them - I will do my best to address them in subsequent articles, or try to find the answers for you. Below you'll find links to all of the series articles, as well as links to other finance articles I've written and an introduction to let you know where I'm coming from.
Series Articles:What are Stocks and Bonds, and How do They Work?
What is a Market Index? The Dow Demystified
What are Mutual Funds? A Beginner's Guide
What is an IRA? A Beginner's Guide
IRAs vs. Mutual Funds: What's the Difference?
What is an Investment Account? A Beginner's Guide
Where Should I Open an IRA?
What are Asset Classes?
Other Finance Articles:Financial Planning for Home Improvements
Using a 401k Loan for a Home Downpayment
Tips for Asset Allocation
Mutual Fund Investments for Seniors
Estate Planning for the Self-Employed
Tips for Living Debt-Free
How to Manage Your Own Stock Portfolio
Budgeting Tips for Baby Boomers
Freelancing When The Economy Has Center Stage
(These articles were not written with the complete beginner in mind, so if you have questions, don't hesitate to ask them in the comments section or refer back to the beginner's series.)
With credit card debt soaring, home foreclosures rising and gas prices through the roof, it's no wonder that more and more Americans are having a hard time making ends meet. However, I believe a big part of the reason that so many people are struggling with money is because they simply don't know the basics of personal finance. In fact, they don't know enough about personal finance to even know what questions to ask with regard to things like investing in the stock market, saving for retirement or making a home down payment. Most of us don't learn anything about personal finance in school, and if our parents don't have any knowledge to pass along, we're left to figure it out on our own. Employers sometimes offer retirement accounts and other vehicles to help their employees save and plan, but people frequently don't have the basic knowledge necessary to understand how to use these perks to their best advantage.
Lucky for me, I've always been naturally frugal, but I had to learn the ins and outs of investing, retirement accounts, asset allocation and other financial matters on my own. I am a self-employed opera singer, so it has been especially crucial for me to learn to take care of my personal financial health, since I don't have an employer-sponsored retirement plan to back me up. Unfortunately, they don't teach this stuff in music school! I was naturally drawn to the subject of personal finance, so even as a beginner learning came easily for me. I gained personal finance knowledge through a combination of reading, asking questions and good old-fashioned trial and error. There are plenty of books and websites out there for beginners with all sorts of information on the topic of personal finance, but the sheer quantity can be overwhelming. Also, I've found that many "beginner" materials don't do a great job with the basics - they assume a certain amount of prior personal finance experience on the part of the reader and use terminology that can confuse or intimidate a complete beginner. On personal finance forums, beginners are often scared to ask "dumb" questions, or they simply don't know what to ask.
As I said above, this series is written with the true, absolute, complete beginner in mind. There are no dumb questions, so ask away. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoy the series!
