Joe Koday Podcasts

Stop Shouting: My Rebuttal to a Progressive who Admonished Me to Play Nice ….

Joe Koday — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:26:07 +0000

The following rebuttal is mine alone. I do not speak for my husband, for my friends, for my children, but solely for myself.

I am tired of being told to sit down and shut up.

I am tired of being told what I can and can not say.

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John Hayward: A Suggestion For The Lame Ducks

Joe Koday — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:57:45 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 16, 2010

Everyone has been watching the lame ducks waddle into Congress with trepidation. What will these “zombie representatives” do? Those who were voted out of office in the midterm elections will be tempted to use this final session of Congress to write themselves into the history books with taxpayer-funded ink. Alex Pappas at the Daily Caller quotes the apprehensive Phil Kerpen, vice-president of Americans for Prosperity, warning a Capitol Hill rally: “If they get their way on spending, we are going to get a trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that funds Obamacare, funds the EPA, funds everything that we want to stop.”

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John Hayward: Dream Of Universal Home Ownership Realized

Joe Koday — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:49:26 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 16, 2010

Leon Wolf writes today at Human Events of Marco Rubio’s victorious Senate campaign as “a referendum on the greatness of America.” Rubio brings vital nourishment to a public starved for optimism and the celebration of greatness. The position of the Democrat Party and its President, on the other hand, is that America’s government has the potential to be great with them in charge, but its peasants are revolting. This has, in turn, contributed greatly to our economic malaise.

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John Hayward: The Poverty Of A Nervous Republic

Joe Koday — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:41:08 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 17, 2010

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John Hayward: The Case of the Disappearing Billions

Joe Koday — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:33:15 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 17, 2010

The federal government spent about three and a half trillion dollars last year. It is the official position of the Democrat Party that not a single dime of that spending can be cut. When pressured to make spending cuts, the Left invariably sighs and trots out policemen and teachers as the first to be sacrificed, claiming there is no fat to be found anywhere else.

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Fred Reed: 396 – Sex and Head Space

Joe Koday — Sat, 20 Nov 2010 03:18:04 +0000

Gonads and Gadgets

A Freddical View

Published by Fred On Everything

June 22, 2008

I have concluded that both sexes are grave mistakes, and constitute a sort of festering biological schizophrenia (if schizophrenia can fester), but they seem to be errors of different sorts. I wonder whether men and women live in quite the same mental world.

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John Hayward: An Interview With Brigitte Gabriel of ACT! for America

Joe Koday — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 12:00:38 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 15, 2010

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Brigitte Gabriel, founder of ACT! For America, a grassroots organization that provided crucial support for State Question 755 in Oklahoma. This is the law that would ban Oklahoma courts from considering Islamic sharia law, or other international legal codes, in their rulings. Last week, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) won a temporary injunction to block implementation of the law. Hearings for a permanent injunction are set to begin November 22nd.

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Frank J. Fleming: Dem Messaging Problem: Can’t Get People to Ignore Reality

Joe Koday — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:05:10 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

November 15, 2010

From a certain perspective, you could hardly imagine anyone more successful than Barack Obama and the Democrats. They came into power with an ambitious, liberal agenda and succeeded in enacting most of it. They passed a great stimulus program, creating or saving millions of jobs, rescued the automobile industry, and started this nation down the path of guaranteed health care for all.

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John Hayward: The Winter Of Democrat Discontent

Joe Koday — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 05:01:28 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 15, 2010

An increasing number of Democrats are expressing unhappiness with President Obama. The President likes to talk about “jobs saved or created,” but he lost or destroyed a remarkable number of Democrat jobs in the House of Representatives this fall.

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Fred Reed: 412 – Conservatives

Joe Koday — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 13:39:14 +0000

Conservatives, Barely. Maybe. But I Doubt It.

A Question of Semantics

Published by Fred On Everything

December 13, 2008

I am trying to understand conservatives. The word has got to mean something, unless of course it doesn’t. For years I thought it meant someone like my grandfather, a professor of mathematics at a small college in the South. He embodied courtesy, respect for learning, personal responsibility, compassion for those in the town who found themselves in distress, dignity, a love of the language, a morality opposed to promiscuity and bastardy, and a quiet Christianity having nothing in common with the cruelty and hostility of today’s unlettered evangelicals. I thought it a pretty decent package, though I had problems with the part about avoiding promiscuity.

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Fred Reed: 422 – Joan Baez

Joe Koday — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 17:00:33 +0000

Baez, Coyne, and Reed

All the Answers You’ll Ever Need

Published by Fred On Everything

July 9, 2009

Last night Vi and I watched for the first time a documentary, (Carry It On) shot by my friend Jim Coyne, on Joan Baez and the movement against a war no one any longer remembers, far away, on another planet. It was lovely filmwork. Jim is a genius. I may have to stop having friends. I feel inferior to all of them. It gets depressing.

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John Hayward: Palestinian Arrested For Facebook Apostasy

Joe Koday — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 16:28:35 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 12, 2010

When the Palestinian government clicks “dislike” on a Facebook page, they don’t mess around. The Associated Press reports that mystery blogger Walid Husayin, who ran an anonymous page where he claimed to be God and insulted the Prophet Mohammed, has been arrested after the staff at his favorite Internet café turned him over to intelligence officers.

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John Hayward: ACORN Goes Bankrupt

Joe Koday — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:02:58 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 10, 2010

The infamous community organization ACORN went bankrupt last week, ending with $8.6 million in debt against less than a quarter million in cash. According to Fox News, the organization was pulling in $46 million as recently as 2008, but contributions deflated at an incredible rate after James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles’ shocking hidden-camera exposes, leaving them with only $1.57 million for 2010. Congress terminated federal funding last year, after pumping over thirty million taxpayer dollars into the organization over the past ten years. There are no soft landings when you get tossed off the federal gravy train.

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Frank J. Fleming: The Freedom to Be an Adult

Joe Koday — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 21:16:14 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

March 2, 2010

There’s a lot of freedom that comes with being a child. Food, shelter — all the important day-to-day stuff — is handled for you. You are left to do as you please throughout most of the day, and while there are a few things you are forced to do, such as go to school and eat your vegetables, these are inarguably for your betterment. There are few real worries when the necessities of survival are guaranteed by your parents, who allow you to be content and carefree. In a way, that’s true freedom.

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John Hayward: Lawsuit Seeks To Erase The Past

Joe Koday — Sun, 14 Nov 2010 18:41:05 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 11, 2010

The Associated Press has a story about a Michigan father who is suing his daughter’s school district, because her fifth-grade teacher read out loud from a book on slavery.

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John Hayward: G20 Nations Meet To Discuss Why Printing Tons Of Money Is Bad

Joe Koday — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 05:01:35 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 10, 2010

President Obama is joining the leaders of the other Group of 20 nations in Seoul, South Korea to discuss increasing the stability of the global economy. The rest of the G20 is not terribly happy with recent American monetary policy, particularly a $600 billion bond buying program from the Federal Reserve.

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John Hayward: San Francisco Defends Helpless Citizens From The Scourge of Happy Meals

Joe Koday — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 05:01:06 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 9, 2010

CNN is reporting the San Francisco board of supervisors will formally approve a ban on most McDonald’s Happy Meals today, thus addressing the most serious issue facing the otherwise untroubled city. The board isn’t just tepidly endorsing this measure – they’re expected to produce enough votes to over-ride a promised veto from Mayor Gavin Newsom.

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John Hayward: The Cost of Cowardice

Joe Koday — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 05:01:35 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 8, 2010

When last we saw Nancy Pelosi and her merry caucus of Profiles In Courage, they were fleeing Washington without deciding the fate of the Bush tax cuts, or even submitting a budget for next year. Allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire would open a billion bleeding wounds in an already battered economy, so the Democrats thought it best to put off a vote until after the elections. It will become one of their top priorities in the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress… right after they figure out a way to siphon enough taxpayer blood to keep union pension plans alive.

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Frank J. Fleming: Liberals Are Mostly Not Exactly Like Terrorists

Joe Koday — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:05:02 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

March 30, 2010

It is often said about terrorism: “They only have to win once; we have to win every time.” That’s the most daunting part about stopping people who want to cause death and mayhem and have no concern for their own lives. We have to be one hundred percent perfect on stopping them, because if they succeed even once it’s a catastrophe. Looking at it that way, it’s almost a miracle we haven’t had more large-scale attacks on our home soil. Still, the terrorists will keep trying, and it seems almost inevitable that one day we’ll slip up again, and they’ll succeed.

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Frank J. Fleming: What Obama Needs Is a Change of Job Description

Joe Koday — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:14:25 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

June 15, 2010

I think the country is being pretty unfair to President Obama. He just seems so befuddled and confused by everything lately, and everyone keeps yelling and being angry at him, which only makes it worse.

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Fred Reed: 457 – Attack Iran

Joe Koday — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 13:25:14 +0000

Let’s Attack Iran!

Children with Matches

Published by Fred On Everything

November 8, 2010

Oh good. I see that Senator Lindsey Graham wants to attack Iran. The US, he says, should “sink their navy, destroy their air force and deliver a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guard.”

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John Hayward: The Progressive Mouse Trap

Joe Koday — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 05:01:22 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 7, 2010

During his post-election press conference last week, the President was asked if he was concerned about exit polls showing 50% support for repeal of his health-care legislation. He replied:

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Fred Reed: 150 – To Marry

Joe Koday — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 02:21:52 +0000

To Marry, Or Not?

That’s Easy

Published by Fred On Everything

Were a young man to ask me, “To marry perchance, or remain forever single?” I would, given the hostile circumstances today of law and love, urge caution. “Marriage is a commitment of several years of your life, plus child support,” I would say. “Do not make it rashly.”

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Frank J. Fleming: How Can Climate Change Advocates Equate My Skepticism to Holocaust Denial?

Joe Koday — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 17:10:05 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

July 4, 2010

Scientists say the sun is getter hotter and brighter. That’s something that’s been going on throughout its life and will continue until it enters its red giant phase in about 5 billion years. In about 1 billion years, it’s estimated the Earth will be too hot for liquid water. If you want my advice — and I’m telling you right now that you do — we should have a plan in place to get the human race off of the planet within 500 million years. And I’d recommend we get a better central power source for our new ecosystem than a star; natural fusion is just sketchy and unreliable.

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Frank J. Fleming: What Do Flat Earthers and Gun Control Advocates Have in Common?

Joe Koday — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 16:27:52 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

July 21, 2010

They say there are still people who believe the earth is flat. Despite all the evidence, despite the logic of the earth being a sphere, despite the pictures from space, despite the fact you can fly over the poles — there are some people who still cling to their silly, completely disproved notion of a flat earth. It’s like for some completely unfathomable reason they made the choice to be stupid and will not be moved from that position. It seemed like an urban legend to me — that there were some people out there perhaps pretending to believe in a flat earth, only as a gag — until I saw there were some people with just as stupid and illogical beliefs who I know aren’t part of a hoax: the few people left in the U.S. who still support increasing gun control.

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Fred Reed: 423-Hagvacas

Joe Koday — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 15:35:56 +0000

Calvin, Lola Beltran, and Mahalia Jackson

We Didn’t Really Need Calvin

Published by Fred On Everything

July 25, 2009

I have concocted a theory that does wonders to explain American politics: We are ruled by history’s most boring people. This is a seminal political idea, up there with Plato’s invention of Stalinism in The Republic.

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John Hayward: No Lasting Harm

Joe Koday — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 00:01:05 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 5, 2010

Reuters has reviewed an advance copy of George W. Bush’s memoir Decision Points, in which the former President offers a strong defense of his decision to approve waterboarding against three terrorist detainees. Bush is adamant that the procedure was “highly effective,” resulted in “no lasting harm,” and produced intelligence that saved lives. Waterboarding broke al-Qaeda cave-troll Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who spilled vital information about planned biological warfare attacks. Despite its success, the technique was banned by President Obama shortly after he took office, earning applause from the sort of people who denounce Guantanamo Bay as a gulag staffed by Nazis but then cough into their handkerchiefs and change the subject when al-Qaeda and Taliban atrocities against prisoners are mentioned.

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John Hayward: The Wave, and the Undertow

Joe Koday — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:01:38 +0000

Published by Human Events

November 4, 2010

The 100-seat “super wave” didn’t materialize, and the Senate did not change hands, but it was a very good night for the GOP. Some of the developments in individual states will have more enduring repercussions than the raw number of seats won and lost. No election is an endgame. Each victory is a prelude to the next election. The nature of a free republic guarantees a national conversation that will never be over.

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Fred Reed: TSA and Its Brethren

Joe Koday — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:16:51 +0000

Published by Fred On Everything

August 18, 2009

After hearing account after account from friends and acquaintances of rude and sometimes abusive behavior by federal officials in Immigrations, TSA, and others, I spoke by telephone to a fellow at TSA in Washington. He was agreeable and helpful, which is not a response one always gets in the capital. Anyway, I subsequently wrote him a letter, reproduced below, which addresses matters that in the past have been of interest to readers.

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Joe Koday: Certified Kissing Instructor

Joe Koday — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 14:20:40 +0000

Let’s talk about the first kiss.

Break out the defibrillator. The first kiss should be a heart-stopper. It should reboot your brain. For those of you running your brain on MS-DOS, you should consider an upgrade else your brain may crash.

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Frank J. Fleming: The Absolute, the Best, the Most Brilliant Solution to Racism Ever!

Joe Koday — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 13:51:33 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

August 2, 2010

Racism. It’s the problem everyone is talking about, and it continues to be a problem because people won’t stop talking about it. Who knew different levels of skin pigmentation could cause so much trouble? In retrospect, the human race probably should have stuck with one skin color (like chartreuse), but it’s too late now, and what a mess we have on our hands. So it’s time for someone — probably me — to come up with a solution to it.

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Frank J. Fleming: Election Question: How Can We Tell the Stupid People From the Smart Ones?

Joe Koday — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 00:01:13 +0000

Published by Pajamas Media

November 2, 2010

How smart do you have to be to tell if someone else is smart? Hopefully not very smart, because a lot of life — and especially politics — involves asking people to separate the bright from the dimwitted. We can’t figure out or do everything ourselves, so we need to know who the smart people are so we know whom to listen to and entrust with important jobs. But if we incorrectly think morons are smart and listen to them and put them in charge, that would be a disaster.

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Joe Koday: Hot Chick Blues

Joe Koday — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 14:22:33 +0000

“Did I tell you that I’ve found the love of my life?” the hot blonde babe emailed me.

“Oh? No, I don’t think you did. Well, maybe I kind of read it in your blogs. I think you’ve written about 47 blog entries over the last couple of days about how happy you are.”

“Yeah. I was beginning to think I was going to just die alone, y’know?”

“Umm. Yeah. I’ve been there.”

“God, it was just so for-EVAH. That last guy really messed me up bad. I was sooooo broken-hearted.”

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John Hayward: The Mind of America

Joe Koday — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:57:16 +0000

Published by Human Events

October 30, 2010

It is often said the people of America are her heart and soul. It’s important to understand that they are also her mind.

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Joe Koday: Billy Bob’s Dating Profiles

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 18:17:54 +0000

“WELCOME TO BILLY BOB’S DATING PROFILES!”

“Uhh, hi.”

“Hi there, young feller. You look like you need you a good ole datin’ profile!”

“I guess so. The ones I’ve been writing myself don’t seem to work very well.”

“Awww, shoot, pardner, most people don’t have a clue how to write one! C’mon over here and siddown. Can I get ya a cuppa mud?”

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Frank J. Fleming: If Life Hands You Lemons, Don’t Make Lemonade without a Permit

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:44:50 +0000

If life gives you lemons, make lemonade. At least that’s what anarchists say. And sociopathic capitalists. In a civilized society, if you somehow legally obtain lemons, that in no way gives you a right to make lemonade. And it certainly doesn’t allow you to sell it

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Fred On Everything: 456 – Guad

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 17:04:54 +0000

La Fuente

Slow Afternoon

So I was sitting with Tom the Robot and Jonesy in La Fuente, an old and cavernous beer bar hard by the cathedral in Guadalajara, and swapping lies. Except they weren’t lies, because some people can’t lie to equal the truth. Otherwise I guess they would. Thing is, lying is a limited form. Life isn’t.

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John Hayward: The China Family

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:12:08 +0000

It has long been my practice to write a horror story on Halloween, and share it with my friends. I posted last year’s effort at Hot Air, along with an essay about horror entitled The Very Witching Time of Night. I thought I would share this year’s story as well. Happy Halloween!

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Fred On Everything: 455 – Caboose

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 01:36:14 +0000

Mountain Roads, Take Me Home

In the unlikely event that home still exists

It may have been the summer of ’85, or may not have been, when I hitchhiked out of Washington, DC, which is the left ventricle of the heart of darkness, toward the coal fields of West Virginia. I was then on the low end of respectability, as I hope I still am. As a veteran of the long-haul thumb in the Sixties, hitchhiking seemed a reasonable way to travel.

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Fred on Everything: 428-Street Trades

Joe Koday — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 00:45:12 +0000

Tales from the Street Trades

Things You Probably Don’t Want to Know

You probably don’t like cops. Nobody does. Ride with them. See what they see. You’ll get a little perspective. You won’t ike it, but you’ll get it.

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Frank J. Fleming: Suggestions on How We Should Treat Our Congressmen

Joe Koday — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 22:06:45 +0000

When the Founding Fathers made this country, they were sick and tired of tyrants. Run-around-shooting-people-with-red-coats tired. So when they designed our government, they put in a bunch of measures to protect us from being pushed around by tyrants. And it worked okay … I guess.

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Frank J. Fleming: Republicans Kind of Suck … Which Is Why They Will Win Huge in November

Joe Koday — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 21:07:07 +0000

This election season has been hard on pundits. The Democrats are going to get massacred in November, and it’s really obvious to pretty much everyone exactly why — which makes writing political commentary like trying to come up with a long-winded explanation for why two plus two equals four.

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Doctor Zero: Remember the 111th

Joe Koday — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 14:53:27 +0000

The 111th Congress began by dropping a trillion dollars in debt on the American taxpayer. The money disappeared in a wild spending spree, buying $2 million jobs in Los Angeles, and evaporating into nonexistent zip codes. Billions of dollars remain clogged in the filthy pipes of government, producing nothing but more debt through accumulated interest payments. Much of the “stimulus” money was used to pump lard into government payrolls, creating useless jobs that vanished as soon as the taxpayer subsidies ran dry. The President recently admitted that the stated reason for appropriating this vast sum of money, the creation of “shovel-ready jobs,” was an outright lie.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: How Much Stimulus Do We Need?

Joe Koday — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 12:36:47 +0000

You know what America really needs? More stimulus spending! We’ve got double-digit unemployment and a moribund economy after President Obama’s first trillion-dollar stimulus bill. Obviously we need more.

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Doctor Zero: Punish Your Enemies

Joe Koday — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 13:36:28 +0000

In a radio interview for Latino audiences, President Obama laid bare the ugly reality of statist government:

“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”

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Fred On Everything: 427-Dead Marine

Joe Koday — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 20:21:28 +0000

Killing America’s Kids

No Big Deal. Hey, They Breed Fast in Tennessee

The web is covered in stink today because of a reporter for the Associated Press, Julie Jacobson, who photographed the death of a Marine whose legs had just been blown off. The kid was Joshua Bernard, a Lance Corporal of 21 years. When the photo appeared, Robert Gates, the Secretary of Defense [sic] furiously tried to get the AP to quash the photo. It didn’t, to its everlasting credit. To quote one of many accounts on the web . . .

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: What Are The Resources Of The State?

Joe Koday — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:47:29 +0000

The central idea behind every form of collectivism is the belief that the State is better able to address most social problems than free-willed individuals. The government is morally and intellectually superior to its citizens. It can be trusted to act in their best interests, while greedy private corporations will only try to take advantage of them.

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Doctor Zero: Bumping In The Night

Joe Koday — Sun, 24 Oct 2010 23:13:58 +0000

It’s almost Halloween, which means it’s time to harvest the fall crop of horror movies. The most memorable scary movies are those which echo the fears of the moment. The Exorcist arrived at a time of tension between science and spirituality, pitting a very modern single mom and her daughter against an ancient terror. Halloween unleashed a faceless, unstoppable evil into the backyards and living rooms of a comfortable suburb. Jaws reminded audiences that overcrowded beaches full of overfed tourists are but the top layer of some very deep waters. The Blair Witch Project used creepy little twig dolls to teach a high-tech, know-it-all generation that old-growth forests still exist, and you can still get lost forever in their shadowy embrace.

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Doctor Zero: Juan Williams And The Preference Cascade

Joe Koday — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 12:30:38 +0000

Everyone has their pet theories about National Public Radio’s stunning decision to fire Juan Williams, and most of those theories are probably correct. Williams is reliably liberal in most of his views, but he’s too friendly with conservatives, and his presence smears a bit too much liberal credibility on the dry right-wing toast of Fox News. It’s a pledge week for NPR, and the high-profile sacking of the tainted Williams will inspire the insulated left-wing audience to push a few more bucks through the feeding slots in their hermetically sealed isolation bubbles.

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Fred On Everything: 430-American Airlines

Joe Koday — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:39:46 +0000

Air John Dillinger

American Airlines: World’s Worst Airline

American Airlines is the only penitentiary I know that doesn’t just sit there stolidly on the ground. No. It has to fly around and inflict itself on the innocent everywhere. It’s every bit as dismal as Sing Sing, though, combining the elegance of a wrestler’s armpit with the curiosity of having the thieves on the outside, at corporate, and the prison matrons on the inside. I’d rather fly in a Dempster Dumpster piloted by a drunk, since dumpsters usually leave on time and are not owned by pickpockets.

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Fred on Everything: 429 – Afghanistan

Joe Koday — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:55:21 +0000

In Afghanistan, why, you might ask, is the world’s hugest, expensivest, most begadgeted military unable to defeat a few thousand angry tribesmen armed with AKs and RPGs?

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Doctor Zero: The Crisis of Confidence

Joe Koday — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 12:36:16 +0000

In the first decade of the new millennium, a great crisis of confidence shook the United States of America. This crisis has cultural and international dimensions. The election of a supposedly “post-racial” black President was meant to achieve a level of racial harmony the public had wearily concluded it could not reach on its own.

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New Recording Equipment

Joe Koday — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 01:43:31 +0000

Last Thursday I made a significant (well, relatively significant) investment in recording podcasts.

A new microphone and a new processor, along with a a mic stand and a pop filter took the better part of $400 out of my checking account. I can’t blame the sales gerbil — I told him what I wanted to accomplish and he told me what I needed to get there. I talked myself into whipping out my debit card.

Then I spent the better part of this weekend trying to figure out how to make it all work. I was particularly frustrated that the new expensive equipment didn’t sound any better than the $60 USB mic I’d bought six months ago. In fact, the new recordings sounded horrible.

Fiddled with the settings and cursed the electronic gods above for hours. Finally said, “Screw it,” uninstalled everything, and reinstalled it right back. That seemed to be the trick. Not sure was I so bullheaded as to be resistant to doing that in the first place. Oh well.

Anyway, I think it sounds better. Doctor Zero’s “Blind Giants” and “Restoring Sanity” were the first two I did with the new equipment. I also re-recorded Doc Zero’s “100th Podcast” just for fun. If you’re reading this and listening to them, I’d be interested in getting your opinion on how it all sounds.

Thank you for listening.

Joe Koday

Doctor Zero: Restoring Sanity

Joe Koday — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:17:34 +0000

Comedian and fake news host Jon Stewart has announced a “Rally to Restore Sanity” on October 30 in Washington, D.C. Nervous at being almost completely eclipsed by Glenn Beck, Stewart decided to stage a rally that would be presented as a satire of Beck’s immense “Restoring Honor” rally in August. Of course, Stewart wants to drop his detachable clown nose at his convenience, to make “dead serious” points, as Time magazine puts it . . .

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Who Is Peddling Fear and Frustration?

Joe Koday — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:26:12 +0000

Back in September, we were astonished by the spectacle of John Kerry lurching before the cameras to call the voters stupid and ignorant. He dismissed the rising tide of resistance to the Democrat agenda by saying, “We have an electorate that doesn’t always pay that much attention to what’s going on so people are influenced by a simple slogan rather than the facts or the truth or what’s happening.” Many observers scratched their heads and wondered what the creepy senator from Massachusetts could possibly be thinking. I said at the time this was not just another instance of Kerry deciding to chow down on a foot sandwich in front of reporters. It was the final narrative produced by the Democrats to limit the damage from the Republican tsunami headed their way in November.

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Fred on Everything: 454 – Squid

Joe Koday — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 16:45:37 +0000

Oh Help

Oh help. Oh help. Oh help.

Reality and Sing Sing have in common that those who can escape from them do. I’m sitting in the living room drinking Padre Kino red and scratching the ears of Long Dog Silver, our low-slung tubular dog who crawled into the yard as a tiny unhappy mange-scab. Occasionlly something good happens, probably by mistake. The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men. gang aft agley, but mange dip works like a charm. That’s today’s wisdom.

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Doctor Zero: Blind Giants

Joe Koday — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 15:38:20 +0000

Watching the polls in tight races fluctuate over the last few days conjures an image of frightened people racing around the feet of a blind giant. Blind giants are dangerous. They cause massive amounts of random destruction as they flail around. It’s very hard to convince them to change course, when they plod toward certain doom.

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Doctor Zero: Life Triumphant

Joe Koday — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 12:36:26 +0000

A billion people watched the rescue of the trapped Chilean miners begin on Tuesday night. It was a remarkable moment of triumph for life over death. The human race does itself credit by celebrating.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Who Wants The Government To Create Jobs?

Joe Koday — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 12:01:46 +0000

Linda McMahon is still behind in the Connecticut Senate race, but she absolutely destroyed her Democrat opponent, Dick Blumenthal, in a recent debate. Blumenthal proved to have a hilariously vague, childlike idea of how jobs are created, stammering something about “creative policies” right before his head exploded, showering the audience with bone fragments. Wait, sorry, that happened in a movie I was watching the other night. It felt like that’s what happened to Blumenthal.

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Doctor Zero: Shadows On The Water

Joe Koday — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 00:01:57 +0000

It’s been ten years since al-Qaeda terrorists blew a hole in the USS Cole, murdering 17 American sailors and injuring 39 more. Our government is not doing enough to honor their memory today. Uniformed soldiers are civilization’s answer to savagery. On October 12, 2000, the bloody frontier of barbarism rolled past the Cole as she rode at anchor.

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Doctor Zero: Competitors and Enemies

Joe Koday — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 01:01:32 +0000

The Democrats have suddenly begun attacking the Chamber of Commerce with bizarre vigor. It’s odd for them to shout so loudly about foreign campaign contributions, when President Obama set records for collecting them through his circus funhouse of a Web site in 2008, and every move this Administration makes showers B-movie villain George Soros with profits. Presumably they are relying on the media to ignore these inconvenient truths, but this might prove to be a dangerous assumption. The liberal media is tired of opening its lunch box to find a few crumbs and a taunting note from Fox News. They have discovered audiences want information, not hours filled with has-been pundits and disgraced politicians discussing how much they hate Sarah Palin.

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Doctor Zero: Let The Right Movie In

Joe Koday — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 00:01:50 +0000

Vampires are drawing big audiences on movie and TV screens these days. The “Twilight” series and HBO’s True Blood have become pop-culture phenomena. For my money, the best vampire tale in recent years was Let the Right One In, a 2008 Swedish film based on a John Ajvide Lindqvist novel. Although it’s only a few years old, it has already been remade as Let Me In, with the setting moved from Stockholm to New Mexico. It certainly isn’t threatening the box-office dominance of “Twilight”, but it’s an excellent horror film in its own right. It’s interesting to compare the American version to the original. If you prefer to see vampires depicted as monsters, instead of manic-depressive super heroes, you can’t go wrong with either film.

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Fred on Everything: 431 – Ethyl and Hillary

Joe Koday — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 02:01:50 +0000

Thoughts from a Disordered Mind

Communing with the Great Purple Father

I can’t stand it. I’m going to have a nurse set me up an IV Padre Kino machine. You’ve heard of a morphine drip? Cheap Mexican wine is a better deal. The supply is more dependable. DEA is trying to eradicate poppies, but hasn’t gotten to grapes. Yet.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Why Take Elections Seriously?

Joe Koday — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 01:00:29 +0000

There’s really no reason to take elections seriously. I’m not talking about voters. We need to take them very seriously indeed. A large portion of our lives has come under political control. Voting the wrong way can cause the industry you work for to be bankrupted, or nationalized. The damage caused by a poor choice of President in 2008 will take many years to undo.

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Doctor Zero: The Failed State

Joe Koday — Sun, 10 Oct 2010 00:01:03 +0000

The problem with this government isn’t just its staggering price tag, or continued offenses against liberty. It’s also a complete failure. Americans are preparing to vote against something previously found only in Third World hell holes: a failed state.

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Doctor Zero: Chumponomics

Joe Koday — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 00:01:36 +0000

The tale of Gene Cranick’s house fire provides a fascinating opportunity to study the intersection of market economics and government action. Cranick is a resident of Obion County, Tennessee, a rural area that does not have its own fire department. Instead, residents pay a $75 fee for fire protection from the city of South Fulton. Cranick decided not to pay this modest fee. When his house caught fire, the South Fulton fire department refused to assist him, instead watching as the house burned to the ground.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: The Human Remainder

Joe Koday — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 00:01:42 +0000

You’ve probably seen the “No Pressure” ad from the global warming scam artists at 10:10 by now. The video is all over the Internet, although the 10:10 organization has been trying to suppress its incredibly stupid mistake… which, as Jim Treacher at the Daily Caller points out, roughly one hundred people made simultaneously.

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Doctor Zero: The Frozen Future

Joe Koday — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 00:01:28 +0000

The Tea Party movement is a rising tide of resistance to the all-consuming State. It has captured the attention of independent voters made nervous by the fabulously expensive failure of Obama-style socialism. But what can it say to those who already depend on the State for their provenance, including a growing payroll of government employees, and those who depend on welfare entitlements?

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Fred on Everything: 432 – In The Himalayas

Joe Koday — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 00:01:20 +0000

Nuther Place. Very Nuther.

Fred and Offshoot Go to About Half-Everest

We caught the seven-o’clock goat-and-chicken out of Kat, my daughter Macon and I, two porters, and our trusty guide Karna. A Nepalese rural bus is not the Stork Club. It is much better, depending on your nerves. For eight hours we bounced higher into the Himalayas with the tires a centimeter from precipices that would have given us time to write our memoirs on the way down. At least three hundred chattering Nepalese were stuffed into that bus. I swear it: three hundred. They aren’t used to motorized vehicles, so much of the time one was hanging out the door and vomiting enthusiastically.

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Fred on Everything: 452 – A Grand Adventure

Joe Koday — Thu, 30 Sep 2010 00:01:18 +0000

A Grand Adventure

He grew up in the woods and rivers of the county, fishing and swimming and hunting under sprawling blue skies and driving his rattletrap car insanely and lying on the moss with his girl and watching the branches above groping the sky and marveling as the young do at the strangeness of life, and the war came in a far country. It doesn’t matter which. It was just a country.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Why Trust The Government?

Joe Koday — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 12:01:59 +0000

When the subprime mortgage crisis exploded in 2008, and the TARP bailouts were on the verge of passage, I wrote a letter to Jim DeMint. It was the second time I’ve written to a politician, the first being a letter of support to President Bush shortly after 9/11. (I described that letter in “Avenger of the Bones,” if you’re curious.)

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Doctor Zero: Democrats Or The Devil

Joe Koday — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 00:01:02 +0000

Considering how hard Rolling Stone worked to make Barack Obama look good in their recent interview, it’s a pity they couldn’t bring themselves to cut the embarrassing “final thoughts” he insisted on appending:

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Fred on Everything: 453 – Big Doin’s in Juarez

Joe Koday — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:01:35 +0000

Big Doin’s in Juarez

Why We Ought to Think, but Won’t

Things change. They change. I arrived in Mexico some seven years ago amid dire warnings from all and sundry that I would instantly die of foul disease, tramplling by burros, and splashing sanguinary crime. All of this I regarded as nonsense, because it was. The State Department issued travel warnings and similar alarums, but State would regard Massachusetts as hazardous. There was little to fear. Expats traveled at will and walked the streets without concern.

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Fred on Everything: 433 – Mahogany Bubble

Joe Koday — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:01:35 +0000

Life in a Mahogany Bubble

An Unlikely interlude

HOUSTON—The remote outskirts of this city stretch forever across featureless land under gray skies, endless parking lots mostly empty, nasty malls, elevated highways roaring and almost uncrossable by pedestrians, of whom there are almost none. It reminded me of hell designed by a concrete manufacturer. Highrise office buildings erupt like square thumbs, one like another, home to god knows who or what. It is chilly.

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Fred on Everything: 434 – End of Santa

Joe Koday — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:01:15 +0000

Worse than War Criminals

The Case for Skewering Santa’s Elves

I’m going to kill Santa Claus—cart him to the guillotine in a tumbrel, and then carry his head through town on a pike. I mean it. That damned red-nosed reindeer will be sausage. Why is his nose red? Because he’s a drunk. His real name is O’Toole. He emigrated to the North Pole under a forged visa.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Does the Constitution Matter?

Joe Koday — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:48 +0000

The rise of the Tea Party movement has encouraged a renewed interest in the Constitution, and the original intent of the Founders. The Left has taken to sneering that Constitution-worship is an infantile obsession, a pointless romance with the larval stage of a living document, which has evolved into a four trillion dollar monarch butterfly. As Richard Cohen of the Washington Post puts it:

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Fred on Everything: 435 – Panty Scanners

Joe Koday — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:45 +0000

Barefoot and Panty-Scanned

The Soviet Union Arrives, Dripping, Having Swum the Atlantic

OK, this goofy guy gets on an airplane with an at least somewhat explosive jockstrap and the entire earth goes wacko and orders porn-scanners and everyone has to watch Obama being Leaderly for hours. He is becoming tiresome to watch. A mahogany president with large white teeth. He looks like a goddam piano. Blacks have achieved racial equality. They can produce presidents as bad as the white ones.

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Doctor Zero: We Are Paying Attention

Joe Koday — Sun, 26 Sep 2010 00:01:23 +0000

The Left was unable to paint the Tea Party as anarchists, violent lunatics, or racists. The feeble attempt to suggest they should really be focusing their ire at George W. Bush or the Republican Party fizzled into embarrassed silence. Like a clumsy kid going deep into the dinnerware department to catch a Nerf football pass in a department store, John Kerry lumbered to the nearest microphone to blurt out the latest meme: the Tea Party isn’t paying attention at all. They’re just bleating in confusion, sheep panicking in the shadow of terrible forces they are not qualified to discuss:

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Doctor Zero: The Ouroboros Revisited

Joe Koday — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:01:59 +0000

If you see yourself as a moderate, independent centrist, there is an image I would ask you to ponder: a great serpent consuming its own tail. It is called the Ouroboros, a symbol of eternity. I’ve written about it before. You can once again see its outline in recent events.

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Fred on Everything: 436 – TSA Again

Joe Koday — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 00:01:15 +0000

The Price of Freedom

Could I Get a Quantity Discount?

On February 17, at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington, DC, a young Nigerian terrorist named Farouk Abdul al Faisal attempted to board United Airlines flight 1497 to Stuttgart, Germany. He had eluded detection by the FBI, and was not on the Terrorist Watch List. He seemed to have succeeded in his aims.

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Doctor Zero: Doubling Down on O’Donnell

Joe Koday — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 00:01:48 +0000

The Delaware Senate race is like a game of Texas Hold-em that started slow, with boring cards on the table, and an obvious winner smirking over his hole cards. A few rounds later, everyone is frantically throwing chips onto a huge pile and waiting for the last card to be dealt. The early favorite folded early, but now he’s circling the table with crumpled bills clutched in a sweaty hand, muttering that he’s “very unhappy with things that happened” early in the game.

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Doctor Zero: Impertinent Questions: Who Owns Our Money?

Joe Koday — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 00:01:39 +0000

Talk of tax cuts fills the air, which means the Left is getting fidgety. They’ve been forced to change from delirious big spenders who see a billion dollars as a rounding error, into flinty-eyed deficit hawks who insist raising taxes to reduce our massive budget deficit is the only responsible course of action. The speed of this transformation has left them dizzy. Consider these quotes from President Obama’s town hall meeting last Monday:

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Doctor Zero: Hopelessness and Stasis

Joe Koday — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 00:01:43 +0000

President Obama kicked off his town hall meeting in Washington D.C. on Monday with the usual dreary whining that has made him such a bore to listen to. “I think we have to go back to what was happening when I was first sworn in… something that took 10 years to create is going to take a little more time to solve.” He sounds like a creepy little kid, taking great pains to make sure everyone is absolutely clear on his alibi before we start talking about the trillion dollars missing out of our cookie jar.

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Fred on Everything: 437 – Mississippi Schools

Joe Koday — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 00:01:02 +0000

On the website of WLOX 13, “The Station for Southern Mississippi,” I find the story of Gabe Stabler, eight years old. Because he came home crying from the first grade every day, his parents put a tape recorder in his back pack to see what really went on in class. From the tape we learn much about his teacher, a Ms. Williams, and about affirmative action, and about the United States today:

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Fred on Everything: 451 – Child Abuse

Joe Koday — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:01:24 +0000

God. Oh God. Oh God, God, God. It is getting worse. Maybe I’ll take cyanide. I find this inspiriting headline polluting my inbox like rotting road-kill. It’s from Broward County, Florida: “Child Still Expelled for Toy Gun – a Year Later Parents want their child back in school. School board says no way” . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Job Creation and Small Business Relief Act of 2010

Joe Koday — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 00:01:16 +0000

Soaring unemployment rates are one of our greatest concerns. The government is having a lot of trouble coming up with legislation to create more jobs. I’d like to propose a bill that would create or save over half a million jobs over the next ten years, and reduce the tax burden on labor cost to small businesses by up to 50% during the same period. The text of the Job Creation and Small Business Relief Act of 2010 is simple: Repeal ObamaCare. Now.

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Doctor Zero: The Palin Card

Joe Koday — Sat, 18 Sep 2010 00:01:31 +0000

Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic thinks it’s time for the Obama Administration to play the “Palin Card,” setting the former governor of Alaska up as the target for some Alinsky-style frozen personal polarizing. He dismisses fears that such Presidential attention will elevate Palin to greater national prominence:

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Doctor Zero: No More Control

Joe Koday — Thu, 16 Sep 2010 00:01:55 +0000

Even as the Tea Party grows in strength from another round of anti-establishment primaries, the Administration is serving weak tea in Washington. What to do about the moribund economy? Perhaps some more “stimulus” spending? Some more subsidies for politically agreeable businesses? Maybe the Democrats could leave the Bush tax cuts in place for the lower income brackets… or would that “deprive” Washington of too much money?

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Fred on Everything: 438 – Darwin

Joe Koday — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 00:01:21 +0000

Evolutionary Psychology, Sort Of

All God’s Chillun Gottun Gotta Have Structure. Most’em, Leastways

People seem to need an overarching explanation of things—of origins, meaning, purpose, and destiny. Christianity provided these things for a long time but, at the close of the Enlightenment, was losing its luster among the educated. Too much in Christianity just didn’t make sense in light of continuing discoveries. The sciences were more compelling, and a better fit for the changing mood of the times.

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Doctor Zero: To Battle the Unimaginable

Joe Koday — Sat, 11 Sep 2010 00:01:59 +0000

An odd little church in Florida touched off a global controversy by threatening to burn a Koran on September 11. They announced the burning had been postponed, but there have already been riots in Indonesia, and injuries in Afghanistan. Naturally, these riots have been accompanied by the burning of American flags. When rage and hatred blaze in the dark corners of the Earth, the symbol of American freedom is usually the first thing to catch fire.

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Doctor Zero: The Remora Economy

Joe Koday — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:01:46 +0000

Thomas Sowell begins his latest column with an idea that has long fascinated me: When people learn that you are an economist, they often want you to predict which way the economy is going. There seem to be more than the usual number of calls for such predictions lately. But an economist should be more aware than others are of how hazardous such predictions can be . . .

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Fred on Everything: 450 – Burning the Koran

Joe Koday — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 00:01:00 +0000

Much hoorah, there is, over the mosque that may or may not be built in New York. I don’t give a tinker’s damn (whatever precisely that may be; I presume that tinkers’ oaths were thought more efficacious than others) whether they build it or not. The matter does however put to rest for me any hope of rationality in human affairs. This, I grant, could be accomplished with a very small bed.

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Doctor Zero: Hold The Stimulus And Pass The Tea

Joe Koday — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:01:09 +0000

President Obama “unveiled” his new “stimulus” plan in Wisconsin today. It was a lot like watching an alcoholic unveil his new plan to get sober by switching to lite beer . . .

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Doctor Zero: Praise With Faint Damning

Joe Koday — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 00:01:26 +0000

In a Friday night post, Allahpundit followed up a dose of pure rotgut Alan Grayson insanity with a little milk of magnesia from the Atlantic Wire. It seems “many liberals” are “rejecting” the new book from Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas.

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Doctor Zero: After The Fall

Joe Koday — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:01:45 +0000

The November elections may well be the most historic reversal of political power in modern history. Sean Trende at Real Clear Politics thinks over 60 seats in the House could go Republican.

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Doctor Zero: History Written By The Losers

Joe Koday — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:39 +0000

Winston Churchill once observed that history is written by the victors. President Obama’s Tuesday night speech on the end of the combat mission in Iraq was an example of history being written by the losers.

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Doctor Zero: The Church of the State

Joe Koday — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:01:21 +0000

Glenn Beck’s enormous weekend rally in Washington has drawn some criticism for its religious character. Howling into the vacuum where CNN’s audience used to be, Bill Press declared the rally to be “a slap at both President Lincoln and Dr. King, not to mention the American people.” Dr. King, you see, gave his timeless “I Have a Dream” speech at the same location, on the same day 47 years earlier. I’m sure he would have been deeply offended at the thought anyone would ever mention God there again.

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Doctor Zero: The Honor of a Great People

Joe Koday — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 00:01:39 +0000

Three hundred thousand people gathered in the Washington Mall on August 28, at the invitation of radio and TV host Glenn Beck, to discuss restoring the honor of the American people. How did a great people come to lose their honor?

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Doctor Zero: Dollars for Dumps

Joe Koday — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:01:59 +0000

The Cash for Clunkers program was touted as a huge success by the Obama Administration. The program offered hefty taxpayer subsidies when old, environmentally insensitive cars were traded in for new vehicles. The old cars were then destroyed, ending their menace to our fragile ecosystem. Their metal was recycled to build the Deepwater Horizon oil rig. Or it was launched into space. I forget which. At any rate, those Clunkers threaten the biosphere no longer.

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Doctor Zero: The Narrative of Hate

Joe Koday — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:01:34 +0000

You hear a lot about the “hatefulness” of conservatives and Tea Party activists these days. Lefty web sites were eager to pin the recent stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in New York on right wingers, since all opposition to the Ground Zero mosque is dismissed as vicious bigotry . . .

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Doctor Zero: Equality Before The Law

Joe Koday — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 00:01:45 +0000

The Washington Post brings us news of an Obama Administration report to the United Nations, confessing our “less than perfect” human rights record . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Phantom Priority

Joe Koday — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 00:01:48 +0000

After the passage of his massive health-care plan, President Obama promised a “hard pivot” to dealing with our flagging economy. Job creation was said to be his new “top priority.” Politicians make a habit of declaring lots of top priorities.

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Fred on Everything: 440 – The US Consulate, Gaudalajara

Joe Koday — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 00:01:32 +0000

Your government at work: Recently, having become legally blind as a result of early misadventures in the Marine Corps, I was notified by the Veterans Administration that my stepdaughter Natalia qualified for education benefits, but that she needed a social-security number. She should apply for said number at the nearest US consulate, in Guadalajara. All she needed was identification and proof, in this case the letter from the VA, that she needed the number.

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Doctor Zero: The Sanctification of Awful Men

Joe Koday — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 00:01:29 +0000

Saturday brought the bizarre saga of Sweden announcing a rape charge against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, then withdrawing the warrant within a matter of hours, downgrading the international media hurricane to a tropical storm of “molestation” charges.

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Fred on Everything: 405 – Fred For Prez

Joe Koday — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 00:01:02 +0000

I see that I shall have to come out of retirement and become President. It is the only hope for the country and the world. That I am willing to undergo the humiliation of the office is a measure of the depth of my sense of duty. Though perhaps I will do it under an assumed name.

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Doctor Zero: The Truth About America

Joe Koday — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:01:11 +0000

Sometimes people say there’s no way America can pull out of its death spiral. No matter what polls may say about the national mood turning against those pushing us into submission and bankruptcy . . . no matter what brilliant ideas for national renewal might be advanced . . . our character has become too flawed.

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Doctor Zero: November In Focus

Joe Koday — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 00:01:11 +0000

The strands of the Internet hum with confusion, anger, and message manipulation from an increasingly desperate Left. Their last-ditch strategy involves brewing up a petri dish full of viral memes about the conservative grassroots, in the hope of weakening their resolve, and perhaps frightening a few independents into staying home in November. They hope to nourish the disgust of the “pox on both their houses” types into lethargy.

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Fred on Everything: 449 – Freedom

Joe Koday — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:01:50 +0000

When I was a kid long, long ago, before time began, or anyone had thought of why time ought to begin, or what it might be good for, I lived in rural King George County, Virginia. The county bordered on the Potomac River and was mostly woods. Dahlgren Naval Proving Ground, on which my family lived, sloped down to Machodoc Creek, perhaps three-quarters of a mile wide.

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Fred on Everything: 447 – Killing Feels So Good

Joe Koday — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:01:42 +0000

On Anti-War.com, I find a loutish American general, James Mattis, martial feminist, talking about the fun he has killing Afghans. Yes, fun, wheeee-oooo! and ooo-rah! too. He says, “You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil,” adding “guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyways. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.” What must he do with prisoners?

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Fred on Everything: 448 – Wikileaks

Joe Koday — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:01:20 +0000

Two ways exist of looking at Wikileaks, the site that publicizes secret military documents and videos. The first is held self-interestedly by the Pentagon and by Fox News, the voice of an angry lower-middle class without too much education. These believe that Wikileakers are traitors, haters of America, who give aid and comfort to the enemy and endanger the lives of Our Boys.

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Doctor Zero: Atonement and Absolution

Joe Koday — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:01:41 +0000

The following facts about Islam are objectively true: 1. Islam is the most violent religion in the world. Almost every point of contact between Islam and other religions, or secular government, is damp with blood . . .

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Doctor Zero, Superhero. Our 100th Podcast!

Joe Koday — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 00:01:02 +0000

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No . . . it’s a plain bird. That’s the best superhero joke I know. Doc Zero once wrote that it was best to begin a composition with an arresting opening paragraph. I always preferred to go for comedy over drama. Get the audience laughing and they’re yours.

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Doctor Zero: The New Abnormal

Joe Koday — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:01:13 +0000

Back in June, Vice President Joe Biden made one of the bizarre statements for which he has become famous, as reported by CBS News: Vice President Joe Biden gave a stark assessment of the economy today, telling an audience of supporters, “there’s no possibility to restore 8 million jobs lost in the Great Recession.”

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Doctor Zero: The Destiny of a Free Nation

Joe Koday — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 00:01:08 +0000

In the comments to The Dominion of Liars, itzWicks asks: The refrain that I hear over and over again at the conclusion of excellent essays such as this (as well as from the well articulated comments that follow on this blog) is sadly the same: “What are we going to do about it? What can be done now?”

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Fred on Everything: 445 – Hooking Up

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:55 +0000

I see where women, or college girls anyway, are honking and blowing most fierce about how they don’t like the way sex works nowadays. Yeah. It seems that the hook-up is in flower. This means that the girl meets some guy on a bus or in a remedial-reading class in college or finds herself in the same elevator, and he says, “Let’s screw,” and she does, maybe right there in the elevator, and then she’s all mad because she did, and because he did, men, the bastards.

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Fred on Everything: 446 – We Are Doomed

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:19 +0000

Looking back on a disordered life that I occasionally package as journalism, but that actually has more in common with the path of a large ball-bearing through a pinball machine, I don’t really think I will slit my wrists. Though it has its appeal. I mean, it’s unnerving to sail through the vastness of an unasked-for universe, round and round a minor sun, on a ball of rock with billions of people, none of whom are adults.

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Fred on Everything: 442 – Mexico and Drugs

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Mexico, if left alone, would be a reasonably successful and stable country of the upper Third World. It isn’t Haiti, isn’t Bangla Desh, isn’t a dying patient with multiple tubes in every orifice. If not strong-armed into chaos, it would be all right.

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Fred on Everything: 443 – Commentator’s Disease

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:15 +0000

When I read columnists or listen to talking heads on the lobotomy box, they strike me as delusional. What are these decapitated crania prattling about? From what morgue did they escape? What country are they from? Certainly not the America I grew up in.

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Fred on Everything: 444 – Extinction

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:13 +0000

I have walked by night on the wild empty beaches of Michoacan when the moon, at its full, aimed a silver path at me over the restless waters, when the wind blew chill and strong from the sea, and the waves, come from China perhaps, rose and roared and crashed and ran up the sands, over and over, over and over, and I have thought, do we know what the fuck we are doing? Is there nothing our sorry species, dirty as monkeys, will not make worse?

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Fred on Everything: 441 – The General Speaks

Joe Koday — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 00:01:12 +0000

Oh lord. Oh lord. I can’t stand it. Somebody get me a drink. Recently I saw an interview with General McChrystal, head butcher of the the Pentagon’s Democracy Implantation Force in Afghanistan. The General was explaining our ongoing victory. Yes, victory.

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Doctor Zero: The Dominion of Liars

Joe Koday — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 00:01:33 +0000

Even some of President Obamaâ€™s supporters are beginning to grumble about what a terrible liar he is. He lies incessantly, often with a clumsy “as I have always said” introduction that seems positively delusional in the Google era.

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Doctor Zero: Requiem For An Ideal

Joe Koday — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:01:10 +0000

California’s Proposition 8 added a provision to the state constitution, declaring “only marriage between a man and a woman is recognized in California.” Its supporters fought a hard campaign in 2008, and passed it with seven million votes.

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Doctor Zero: The Bailout Singularity

Joe Koday — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 00:01:44 +0000

Reuters columnist James Pethokoukis tells us the markets are preparing for a fantastically expensive “August Surprise” from President Obama:

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Doctor Zero: A Wealth Of Options

Joe Koday — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 00:01:14 +0000

Arthur Laffer has a magnificent column in the Wall Street Journal today, concerning the reduction of income to the Treasury which accompanies rising tax rates on the evil rich. Laffer’s expertise on this subject is legendary, as is his patience for explaining it over and over again, to generations of liberals who refuse to believe it.

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Doctor Zero: The Value of a Volt

Joe Koday — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 00:01:05 +0000

How much is a new Chevy Volt electric car worth? The sticker price is $41,000. However, with federal subsidies, you could pay as little as $33,500. Additional subsidies provided by the state of California could knock it down even lower, for residents of the Golden State. So what’s the price?

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Doctor Zero: The Shape of Things to Come

Joe Koday — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 00:01:30 +0000

The past few days have brought a number of developments which illuminate the future our ruling party has planned for us. Consider the outlines of this rapidly approaching future when you decide how vigorously you wish to oppose it, or whether you’ll allow a general sense of disgust and weariness to keep you away from the polls in the next few elections.

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Doctor Zero: Argument By Graffiti

Joe Koday — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 00:01:41 +0000

The local news in my part of Florida is humming over a peculiar act of vandalism. At some point over the weekend, someone posted a set of well-made yellow street signs reading “Illegal Alien Crossing.” Identical signs were posted on either side of a pedestrian crossing, so drivers heading both ways would see them.

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Doctor Zero: The Calculus of Racism

Joe Koday — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 00:01:40 +0000

Shirley Sherrod, formerly of the USDA, said some rather provocative things during the rambling March 2010 speech that would later prompt the Obama Administration to summarily dismiss her.

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Doctor Zero: The Independent Question

Joe Koday — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 00:01:34 +0000

We’re getting close to a major congressional election, and the early maneuvers of the 2012 presidential race are under way. That means it’s time to worry about independent voters again.

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Doctor Zero: Whistling Past The JournoList Graveyard

Joe Koday — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 00:01:27 +0000

Leftist writers and pundits have been trying to stroll past the crater left by the Daily Caller’s JournoList bombshell, hands stuffed in their pockets and eyes rigidly forward. Over at the Caller, Jim Treacher provides a roundup of reaction from across the blogosphere (look for a familiar name!)

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Doctor Zero: Value is Knowledge

Joe Koday — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 00:01:08 +0000

Value is knowledge. That sounds a little backward, doesn’t it? It’s easy to see how knowledge is valuable. Consider the fanciful example of traveling back in time with tomorrow’s stock market results. Such data would be worth fantastic sums of money.

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Doctor Zero: The Great Crash

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:01:38 +0000

During my college days in the early Nineties, I read a study that projected tax rates into the future, assuming government spending remained fixed at early Clinton levels. Due to the explosion of entitlement spending brought about by the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare, even the lower income brackets would face something like a sixty percent federal tax burden by the 2020s.

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Doctor Zero: The Parable of the Bread Aisle

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:01:33 +0000

What does the bread aisle of your local grocery store look like? Chances are it’s quite large, featuring shelves filled with many different types of bread. Each type of bread is also offered by different companies — you’ll have several brands of wheat or rye bread to choose from. One of these options will probably be the “house brand” of the grocery store itself, and it will likely be cheaper than any of the other brands, particularly for staples such as white and wheat bread . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Death of the Individual

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Liberalism has given itself many different names over the years. The American Left and its political vehicle, the Democrat Party, are most accurately described as collectivists. The belief that unites the various factions within the party is their determination to accumulate power in the central government, which they believe is morally and intellectually superior to individual citizens and free enterprise.

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Doctor Zero: Serious Human Beings

Joe Koday — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 00:01:23 +0000

Even as the starting bell rings for the first round of the Republican presidential free-for-all, we’ve got a couple of anonymous Mitt Romney advisors coming off the top rope, aiming elbow smashes at Sarah Palin’s back.

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Doctor Zero: Two Kinds of Apocalypse

Joe Koday — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Through DVD rental, I recently saw two films which took a similar premise in very different directions. The contrast between them is interesting.

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Doctor Zero: Green Economics and the Void of Desire

Joe Koday — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 00:01:12 +0000

Whatever “green jobs” are, it’s very clear America doesn’t want them.

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Doctor Zero: The Business of Government

Joe Koday — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 00:01:06 +0000

The original mission statement of NASA reads as follows: “To improve life here, to extend life to there, to find life beyond.” The part about improving life here turns out to be a kind of cosmic Interstate Commerce Clause, justifying any conceivable activity including “expanding our international relationships” and “reaching out to the Muslim world,” which NASA administrator Charles Bolden sees as “perhaps foremost.”

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Doctor Zero: The Virtual Government

Joe Koday — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:01:39 +0000

On the most urgent matters facing the United States at the moment — including the economy, the Gulf oil spill, border security, and foreign policy — Obama and the Democrat Party have almost completely given up on addressing the actual crises.

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Doctor Zero: The American Faith

Joe Koday — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:01:43 +0000

During his immigration speech last week, President Obama said: “Being an American is not a matter of blood or birth. It’s a matter of faith.”

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Doctor Zero: Robert Byrd and the Privileges of Aristocracy

Joe Koday — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 00:01:08 +0000

Mike Riggs at the Daily Caller reports on a remarkable statement of support for the late Senator Robert Byrd from the NAACP: On Monday the organization released a statement from NAACP President and Chief Executive Benjamin Todd Jealous claiming that Byrd’s life “reflects the transformative power of this nation.”

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Doctor Zero: Awakening From The Collective Dream

Joe Koday — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 00:01:08 +0000

Thomas Sowell makes an interesting point about gun control laws, in the wake of the recent Supreme Court decision concerning the Second Amendment:

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Doctor Zero: A World Without Profit

Joe Koday — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 00:01:01 +0000

The concept of profit takes a lot of abuse from the Left. Democrats usually spit the word out as though it were a curse, especially when they’re working to increase government control over private industry.

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Doctor Zero: Big Government, Bad Journalism

Joe Koday — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 00:01:50 +0000

Just the other day, I was discussing the challenge of maintaining cordial relationships in a highly politicized society with a friend of mine. When politics have infused every aspect of our lives, right down to the menus at fast-food restaurants, our political opinions are often interpreted as judgments of character.

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Doctor Zero: Night of the Yeoman

Joe Koday — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 00:01:52 +0000

There are two Republican parties, and both had a candidate on the 2008 presidential ticket. John McCain was the candidate of the thin-blooded aristocracy, tired men who dislike certain elements of their nominal constituency far more intensely than their political opposition . . .

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Doctor Zero: Nothing In Moderation

Joe Koday — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 00:01:01 +0000

British papers have an odd habit of hooking up with utterly clueless American correspondents, to obtain preposterous reports on the rapidly changing American political scene. Back in February, the Guardian passed over the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have actually seen a Tea Party rally to publish the tedious fantasies of Joe Queenan.

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Doctor Zero: Honor From Our Fathers

Joe Koday — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 00:01:04 +0000

Honor is essential to the maintenance of a free society. We learn about honor from our fathers.

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Doctor Zero: The Helpless Titan

Joe Koday — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 00:01:26 +0000

The current federal government of the United States is the largest, best-funded organization in human history. Our public debt has grown to over $13 trillion. We pay hundreds of billions per year just to service this debt . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Birth of Defiance

Joe Koday — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 00:01:39 +0000

The American flag is 233 years old today. The President has proclaimed the entire week to be Flag Week, which sounds like a good idea to me. She deserves a good long birthday celebration.

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Doctor Zero: The Pillars of Apathy

Joe Koday — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 00:01:37 +0000

Every time I write something optimistic about the future of the United States, I hear from some doomsayers who assure me things will never get any better. Pessimistic conservatives say we’re locked into a death spiral, at the mercy of a system running on autopilot and programmed to crash.

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Doctor Zero: On The Table

Joe Koday — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 00:01:40 +0000

Some grim humor could be found earlier this week, in the spectacle of the President’s “deficit reduction commission” going over budget and running out of money . . .

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Doctor Zero: No Country For Old Hens

Joe Koday — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 00:01:19 +0000

It’s easy to see the contemptible end of Helen Thomas’ career as a metaphor for the twilight of the entire dinosaur media. Her departure is the latest tremor in a rapidly shifting print and television landscape. This is no country for old hens.

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Doctor Zero: Slaves of the Ethereal Machine

Joe Koday — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 00:01:29 +0000

As reported by MoneyNews.com, investment guru Warren Buffett is worried about a “meltdown” in municipal debt:

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Doctor Zero: Anti-Civilization

Joe Koday — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 00:01:31 +0000

Look at the world through the eyes of Hamas and its apologists, and ask yourself: what’s the point of sending a couple of boats full of terror “activists” to run the Gaza blockade?

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Doctor Zero: ObamaCare By Any Other Name

Joe Koday — Mon, 31 May 2010 00:01:46 +0000

Why are liberals suddenly objecting to the name “ObamaCare,” forcefully enough to compel Jake Tapper to apologize for using the term? As Allahpundit noted, it’s supposed to be the crowning achievement of the Obama presidency — and, indeed, the modern Democrat Party. He should be proud to have it named after him.

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Doctor Zero: Pearls On Green Velvet

Joe Koday — Mon, 31 May 2010 00:01:33 +0000

When I heard that President Obama would skip the Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery, my initial reaction was surprise. It seemed like a foolish unforced error, the sort of mistake a wartime President with flagging popularity can hardly afford.

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Doctor Zero: Versus America

Joe Koday — Sat, 29 May 2010 00:01:39 +0000

One of the most striking moments in our increasingly surreal politics came when congressional Democrats leaped to their feet and applauded a foreign leader as he trashed the state of Arizona and its immigration law . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Betrayal of Mystery

Joe Koday — Fri, 28 May 2010 00:01:57 +0000

If you enjoyed the finale of Lost, I’m not writing this to challenge your taste. You have nothing to apologize for, or defend. There’s nothing “wrong” with cherishing the fine acting and emotional resonance of its reunions and farewells . . .

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Doctor Zero: Broken Puzzles

Joe Koday — Mon, 24 May 2010 00:01:12 +0000

Tonight, fans will bid farewell to Lost, one of the most potent obsessions to erupt from popular culture in the past decade . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Feral Vanguard

Joe Koday — Mon, 24 May 2010 00:01:11 +0000

In “The Necessary Enemy,” one of the first posts I wrote for Hot Air over a year ago, I made this point about the violent and desperate nature of socialism:

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Doctor Zero: The Tea Party Imperative

Joe Koday — Thu, 20 May 2010 00:01:29 +0000

Rand Paul’s decisive victory in the Kentucky GOP primary is widely viewed as a demonstration of Tea Party power. Democrat spin doctors have already wheeled Paul into surgery, laughing and high-fiving each other as radioactive chunks of extremism turn up in his biopsies. He might be sitting on a healthy lead against his Democrat opponent now, but they’re hoping he’ll rot away from extremism tumors by November. Since Jack Murtha’s chosen successor prevailed in Pennsylvania, the prognosis for anti-establishment, anti-incumbency fever might not be so bad after all!

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Doctor Zero: An Interview With Dick Blumenthal

Joe Koday — Wed, 19 May 2010 00:01:57 +0000

Following is an excerpt from an Associated Press interview with Democratic Senate candidate Dick Blumenthal, currently fighting allegations that he lied about his military service in Vietnam . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Custodians of Memory

Joe Koday — Tue, 18 May 2010 00:01:40 +0000

I was a high-school student when the movie Rambo came out in theaters. While waiting in line for a seat on opening weekend, I saw a group of Vietnam vets coming out of a previous showing. One of them was in a wheelchair. I asked them what they thought of the movie. They all indicated they had greatly enjoyed it.

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Doctor Zero: Heart and Soul of the Right

Joe Koday — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:01:38 +0000

Public Policy Polling released a poll of possible Republican presidential contenders yesterday, putting Sarah Palin in fourth place behind Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, and even Newt Gingrich. All four are within a few points of each other, and the data comes from the same outfit which assured us Doug Hoffman would sweep New York’s 23rd district by double digits, so the poll should be taken with a grain of salt. Unfortunately, the government says we can’t have salt anymore, so I guess we’ll have to take it seriously.

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Doctor Zero: Romancing The State

Joe Koday — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:01:33 +0000

Speaking before a group opposed to gay marriage on Saturday, Florida GOP Senate candidate Marco Rubio discussed the increasing power of Big Government:

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Doctor Zero: How To Be Poor

Joe Koday — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:01:29 +0000

Extreme poverty is not a difficult condition to reach. All you have to do is remove yourself to a desolate wilderness area, and exert the minimum effort necessary to feed and shelter yourself. Any increase in activity, or human interaction, will make you less poor.

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Doctor Zero: Opposing Kagan

Joe Koday — Wed, 12 May 2010 00:01:34 +0000

The second round of Survivor: Supreme Court — Obama Edition has begun, and there isn’t much chance Elena Kagan will be voted off the island. The Republicans should try anyway. She isn’t a very good nominee. Was there no one with a more impressive resume, and a greater volume of published work, who could be nominated? Not a single experienced judge was fit for the job? A Supreme Court justice holds a position of great power and importance, which will be occupied for decades. A nominee should appear before the public with great fanfare, not a few half-hearted toots on a rusty trumpet.

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Doctor Zero: Men of Iron and Steel

Joe Koday — Sat, 08 May 2010 00:01:37 +0000

The release of “Iron Man 2″ this weekend kicks off the summer blockbuster season. It’s an interesting cultural moment for conservatives. The movie version of Iron Man is one of the most unambiguously libertarian figures in popular culture, a billionaire industrialist playboy who spends much of the new movie telling the government to get bent when it tries to claim his amazing suit of high-tech armor. He’s patriotic, loves the military, and views the bad actors of the world from a Reaganite position of moral confidence. In the original movie, he did what Hollywood has been painfully reluctant to do, ever since September 11: he flew over to the Middle East and took out the trash. This Atlas doesn’t shrug… he busts out repulsor beams and micro-missiles.

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Doctor Zero: A Republic of Reason

Joe Koday — Fri, 07 May 2010 00:01:52 +0000

Everyone prefers the government to conduct its affairs with reason. We live in a lawful republic, rather than suffering at the mercy of an emotionally unstable monarch. Faith in law demands the supremacy of reason, because law is discipline, the opposite of uncontrolled passion.

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Doctor Zero: Invisible Truth

Joe Koday — Tue, 04 May 2010 00:01:49 +0000

A while ago, InstaPunk wondered if reviewing elementary concepts, as I often do, is an effective use of conservative energy. To explore the idea further, he put together a provocative list of basic ideas that should be understood as common sense by most people, inviting his readers to suggest more. Can these concepts be conclusively “proven?” Is it possible to explain them persuasively to people who don’t already accept them? Is it worth directing heavy intellectual firepower at such obvious targets?

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Doctor Zero: The Tiny Wings of Liberty

Joe Koday — Mon, 03 May 2010 00:01:33 +0000

New weapons are constantly added to the arsenal of liberty through the energy and creativity of free men. One such weapon is Twitter, the social networking service that limits users to posts of 140 characters or less. Twitter was instrumental during the recent protests against the Iranian government. It’s a town-hall meeting where everyone gets to speak, but every speech is timed with a chess clock.

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Doctor Zero: Capitalism Versus Racism

Joe Koday — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:01:43 +0000

The political atmosphere crackles with charges of racism. President Obama’s functionaries and allies make dark insinuations about the racial motives behind all opposition to his agenda. Tea party protests against Big Government are portrayed as thinly veiled Klan rallies. The boycott of Glenn Beck’s TV show is based on the idea that calling a black liberal Democrat racist is, itself, an act of indefensible racism. The hilariously incompetent and biased MSNBC network was so desperate to portray town hall protesters as racists that it framed the image of a black man holding a rifle to obscure his face, then tried to pass him off as an armed white supremacist . . .

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Doctor Zero: A Prayer From The Living World

Joe Koday — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:01:35 +0000

The body of actor Andrew Koenig was found in Vancouver’s Stanley Park yesterday. His father, Walter Koenig, said that his son “took his own life, and was in a lot of pain.” Like most of my generation, I grew up with Walter Koenig as Chekhov on Star Trek, and he played a superb villain much later, on Babylon 5. Until his press conference yesterday, I didn’t realize he was a man of such incredible strength and dignity. He asked for his family to be left in peace to mourn their loss. I hope he won’t mind if I take this sad occasion to address others who might be following the road that ended in Stanley Park for Andrew. No matter how far you have gone down that road, there is always a path that leads away. I could offer no greater tribute to Andrew and his family than trying to help you take it, or at least see it . . .

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Doctor Zero: Joy To The World

Joe Koday — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:01:28 +0000

I’m not a practicing member of any congregation, but I’ve never entertained a single atheist thought. No aspect of creation has led me to doubt the existence of the Creator. I have never doubted that life endures beyond the final beat of a mortal heart. Faith and feeling lead me to hold these beliefs, but I hold them in concert with reason, not in defiance of it. I don’t believe any part of creation was put here for us to ignore, or deny . . .

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Doctor Zero: Defending the Invincible

Joe Koday — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:01:26 +0000

Almost every column written in defense of Rush Limbaugh over the last few days, following the vicious campaign to slander him as a racist, has included a statement along the lines of “Rush is rich, powerful, intelligent, and articulate, so he can take care of himself, and he’ll be just fine.” I don’t mean to disparage the authors of these sentiments, but I must disagree. I know the most popular conservative broadcaster in America doesn’t need some anonymous guest-author on a blog to defend him, but I’m going to do it anyway, without the slightest reservation due to his wealth and power . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Suicide Fantasy

Joe Koday — Sun, 02 May 2010 00:01:00 +0000

I went to see Avatar on Sunday evening, and found myself generally in agreement with Ed Morrissey’s review. Although many reviewers have complained the film takes too long to reach its climax, I thought the early and middle sections were the most enjoyable parts. The visual achievement is dazzling, in both design and execution, making the exploration of both the human and alien portions of Avatar’s beautiful world very entertaining . . .

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Doctor Zero: For the Love of Capitalism

Joe Koday — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:01:38 +0000

Socialism always seems to have a marketing advantage over capitalism. This is not surprising, because socialism is a deeply romantic notion: a dangerously seductive dream of prosperity as a function of justice, where the wise redistribute the profits of the wicked to care for the needy. Socialism’s promises are so alluring that questions about its poor performance are dismissed as rude. It is a childish philosophy, and like any errant child, it receives a limitless supply of forgiveness and second chances . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Luxury of Conservation

Joe Koday — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:01:12 +0000

Writing on her Facebook page about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Sarah Palin explains why she remains committed to developing domestic oil resources, even though she had a front-row seat to the Exxon Valdez disaster . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Parable of the Satellite Dish

Joe Koday — Sat, 01 May 2010 00:01:04 +0000

Imagine a large condominium complex is meeting to consider a package deal with a cable TV company. Over eighty percent of the condo owners have their own satellite dishes, and are quite happy with the service. Some of them don’t bother to watch television at all, preferring to rent movies from Blockbuster or Netflix for entertainment. However, the condominium Board of Directors says they’re getting a lot of complaints from the residents who don’t have satellite dishes, demanding the condo association purchase a cable TV package, and fold its cost into the monthly homeowner dues . . .

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Doctor Zero: Law Unenforcement

Joe Koday — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 00:01:57 +0000

The United States of America, like every other nation on earth, has laws concerning immigration and the security of its border. Some people feel these laws are too restrictive, or not restrictive enough, but no one seriously disputes they exist . . .

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Doctor Zero: Tapping the Golden Vein

Joe Koday — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:01:56 +0000

Centuries ago, at the beginning of the Obama Administration, we were told that the “obscene” bonuses of AIG executives should be taxed away, with special taxes that amounted to bills of attainder. This is not the first time we’ve seen specific industries targeted with massive taxes because they were deemed immoral. The outstanding example is the tobacco industry, which the government uses as a trained vampire, sending it forth to suck tax revenue from the lungs of smokers. Big Oil gets soaked with a lot of taxes, too, justified in part by the merciless profiteering and environmental disdain of its chief executives. Of course, Big Tobacco and Big Oil still make money, but the government makes more from their products than they do . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Green Death

Joe Koday — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 00:01:41 +0000

Who is the worst killer in the long, ugly history of war and extermination? Hitler? Stalin? Pol Pot? Not even close. A single book called Silent Spring killed far more people than all those fiends put together . . .

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Doctor Zero: Scrapping the United States

Joe Koday — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:01:50 +0000

The United States is on the verge of being carved into pieces and sold for scrap. She’s the fastest, strongest ship ever built. She crossed the Atlantic in three days and ten hours, a record which stands to this day. Hurricane waves break into salt and mist against her hull. The electric fury of the deep sea could scarcely delay her timely entry into port. The SS United States is a monument to dedication and vision, built by a nation that revered its legacy of courage and defiance. She was commissioned halfway through the twentieth century, designed by men who had dreamed of her through two world wars. She was put to sea by people who measured time with calendars. She has been given up for dead by a world whose patience is measured by the digital clock on its smart phones . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Fragile Left

Joe Koday — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 00:01:42 +0000

Conventional wisdom portrays the passage of ObamaCare as a decisive triumph for the American Left, which has finally been dealt the ace it needed for the royal flush of statism. A year of deception and backroom deals, followed by a partisan vote in defiance of a solid majority of the voters, has supposedly forged a thousand pages of paper chains we can never break. Despite the prospect of heavy losses in the next couple of elections, the Left looks forward to permanent power, as the hated middle class are transformed into clients of the State. The political contests of the future will be arguments between left of center, and slightly right of left of center, as they debate how much smaller the private sector should become each year . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Parable of the Referee

Joe Koday — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:01:37 +0000

I often hear people on the Left accuse the defenders of capitalism of wanting completely unregulated markets, in which helpless citizens will be stripped of all legal protection, and placed at the mercy of rapacious bankers and businessmen. This is a straw man of such towering size that Nicholas Cage can be glimpsed inside its head, holding his broken legs and howling for his agent to land him a part in a better movie . . .

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Doctor Zero: Money Versus Wealth

Joe Koday — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:01:49 +0000

One way to measure the “transformational” power of the Obama presidency is to consider the speed with which Democrats transformed from the steel-taloned deficit hawks of the Bush years, into a party very comfortable with trillion-dollar deficits, and a fifteen-trillion-plus projected national debt. Anyone old enough to remember the early Clinton years has seen this happen before, of course. As the shadow of the Obama deficits looms over the economy, we can expect to begin seeing the sort of breezy journalism we got in the Nineties, wondering exactly why deficits are so bad. The fact that liberals are willing to ask the question illustrates one of the fatal flaws in socialist economic policy: the confusion between money and wealth.

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Doctor Zero: Champion of the Light

Joe Koday — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 00:01:45 +0000

By now, you’ve probably watched the death of Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax on video. In the early morning hours of April 18, on a sidewalk in Queens, he stepped forward to save a woman from a mugger. The mugger had a knife. Multiple stab wounds to the torso didn’t stop Tale-Yax from trying to chase his killer down. His blood ran out before his spirit did . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Dreadful Equation

Joe Koday — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 00:01:40 +0000

What is money? It’s a medium of exchange — you use it to make purchases. To the average individual, money is also a means of cooperation. It transforms the value of your labor into a very efficient form of communication . . .

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Doctor Zero: In Defense of Marriage

Joe Koday — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:01:45 +0000

Recent events have made the legal recognition of gay marriage a hot topic. Social conservatives are fighting a battle to preserve the traditional definition of marriage, and this battle is entering a crucial stage. The other side of the argument has enormous influence in the popular culture, to the point where one of its most outspoken activists can be invited to judge the Miss USA contest, and use his position to score political points. Social conservatives are presumed guilty of bigotry for daring to speak in favor of traditional marriage – as the Carrie Prejean affair demonstrates, they are treated more like defendants at a trial, than participants in a debate . . .

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Doctor Zero: To Keep and Bear Arms

Joe Koday — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 00:01:37 +0000

Twenty-five years ago, a little after sunrise on a Monday morning, the front door of my house was kicked in by a man who had blown his mind with crack cocaine. He marched my family upstairs at gunpoint. When I reached the top of the stairs and turned around, he put the gun in my forehead and pulled the trigger . . .

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Doctor Zero: We Need A Quick Reference Card

Joe Koday — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 00:01:52 +0000

According to Joe Klein, a duly credentialed member of the media elite, Charles Krauthammer can’t write about any aspect of modern life with “nuance” because he’s confined to a wheelchair. Of course it’s an outrage, but it’s also confusing. I wonder if the Left would be so kind as to prepare a Quick Reference card, to help us understand the proper meaning of experience, and the value of majority opinion . . .

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Doctor Zero: Bordering On Fraud

Joe Koday — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:01:51 +0000

There are many areas in which the American political class does not deal honestly with her citizens. Immigration is one of the worst. Deceit and disrespect flow from both parties. John McCain, who previously regarded serious enforcement of immigration law as morally equivalent to hunting Mexicans for sport, suddenly supports a bill that would allow Arizona police to arrest people on the “reasonable suspicion” they’re in the country illegally. While contemplating the southern horizon last week, he realized it would be greatly improved by the addition of a massive wall, tastefully decorated with three thousand National Guard troops. None of these border security revelations would have occurred to McCain if not for a surprisingly strong challenge from J.D. Hayworth, and they would not long survive his re-election . . .

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Doctor Zero: Who Mines the Dilithium?

Joe Koday — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:01:22 +0000

One of my favorite little moments in the very entertaining new “Star Trek” movie comes when the young James T. Kirk activates the computer system of a car he swiped for a joyride, and the Nokia logo comes up. It’s nice to see Nokia’s still in business in the twenty-third century. Such simple touches help to humanize the Star Trek universe, which had drifted a bit too far from recognizable human experience for audiences to fully engage with its characters. The presence of a good old-fashioned corporate logo in the new movie put me in mind of a long-ago, free-wheeling, beer-fueled rant after I saw a previous “Star Trek” movie with some friends, and we asked ourselves, “Who mines the dilithium?”

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Doctor Zero: Hospice America

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:57 +0000

. . . For my part, I found these remarks more . . . melancholy than outrageous. Ed asked, “What exactly is there not to like about having the dominant military in the world?” Let me ask a slightly different question: What other nation, beyond the Western democracies, would not like it? Everyone from heavyweight contenders like China, to the comeback empire of Russia, down to nasty little street fighters like North Korea and Iran would love to be dominant military superpowers. Their dreams include detailed plans for using that power, should they ever acquire it . . .

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Doctor Zero: Falling Through Fire

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:41 +0000

When someone told me a plane had just hit the World Trade Center, I thought they meant a Cessna. I would imagine a lot of people had that reaction on 9/11. The truth was difficult to comprehend. The fear we inflict upon ourselves is electric with anticipation. Real horror, dropped before our eyes without warning, is dry and hollow. It can be difficult to focus your eyes on something you never saw coming . . .

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Doctor Zero: An Excerpt From Meghan McCain’s Totally Awesome Six-Figure Book, Coming Soon!

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:28 +0000

. . . having a hard time understanding why people were so slow to follow my warnings, and steer clear of extremely extremist ppl like that extreme Michelle Malkin. I mean, like, we’re right in the middle of this historic debate about giving people health care so they won’t die any more, and she’s pushing some stupid book that says our historic black president is actually some kind of crook. Talk about ankle-biting! I mean, President Obama is not only historic and totally cool, but he probably has even more Twitter followers than me, and here’s this nasty little book by a woman that has less than half as many Twitter followers as I do, trying to cut him down! How stupid is that? Hello, Michelle? This President is a giant walking through history, and you’re like a little blob of pink bubble gum on the pavement, and I would totally be honored to be the curb he uses to scrape you off his shoe after he steps on you . . .

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Doctor Zero: Zero Percent Unemployment – Now!

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:21 +0000

There are about 15 million people unemployed in the United States at the moment, and the number is rising. Barack Obama is personally responsible for every single one of them. Why? Because he could hire them all . .

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Doctor Zero: Big Government Versus Big Business

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Every species of liberal hates and fears big corporations. Conservatives are often amazed that liberals could place so much faith in Big Government, when it has such a horrific record of producing waste, corruption, and bloodshed, around the world and across the decades. One of the keys to understanding the Left is appreciating their conviction that either Big Business or Big Government will inevitably control American life, and they very much prefer the latter . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Virtue of Humility

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:18 +0000

Viewers of MTV’s Video Music Awards last night were treated to the thrilling spectacle of Kanye West leaping onto the stage and manfully wrestling the microphone away from 20-year-old Taylor Swift, to inform the world that Swift didn’t deserve the award she just won. This was a remarkably courageous action on West’s part, since rumor has it Taylor Swift’s bones have been laced with an unbreakable metal called “adamantium,” and she has six-inch metal claws hidden in her knuckles. Poor Kanye could have been killed . . .

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Doctor Zero: Breaking Bad

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:15 +0000

Last night brought the season finale of one of my favorite television shows, “Breaking Bad” on AMC. It’s a brilliant combination of clever writing and terrific acting, especially lead actor Bryan Cranston. His performance drives the show — he’s so good that you can see the rest of the cast stepping up their game and improving their own performances with each passing episode. Alternately tragic and darkly hilarious, “Breaking Bad” has something serious to say about the way people are all connected to each other, causing every action we take to ripple through the lives of everyone around us . . .

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Doctor Zero: Who We Are

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:10 +0000

There seems to be a bit of confusion among Democrats about the nature of the opposition to their plans. Maybe I can help clear things up, by telling them a few things about us. We’re not paid minions of any corporate interest or lobby. Most bloggers working to stop the Obama health-care disaster are like me, writing when they can find the time, because we care about the future of our country. The same is true of the people showing up at town hall meetings, and organizing rallies. Some of us are well-dressed in tailored suits. Others wear jeans and T-shirts. Most of us are dressed in what we wore to work . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Myth of Job Creation

Joe Koday — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 00:01:02 +0000

Among the most unforgettable statements to come from President Obama was his repeated claim to have “saved or created” some ever-changing number of jobs. He stopped making this claim when it was greeted with roars of laughter, which in turn fell silent when unemployment numbers began threatening to set off the tilt alarm on the economic pinball machine. We were all laughing at the assumption of childlike voter stupidity in the “saved” part of this statement, but the “created” part is equally absurd . . .

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Doctor Zero: The New Currency Is Obedience

Joe Koday — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:01:55 +0000

Tax Day 2010 saw massive demonstrations beneath the still-rising star of the Tea Party, coupled with a darkly amusing sideshow: hilariously incompetent attempts by left-wing operatives to infiltrate the demonstrations, setting up fraudulent photo ops to discredit the Tea Party. The most notorious organizer of these activities, “Crash the Tea Party” founder Jason Levin, turned out to be a middle-school teacher, and is now under investigation by the Teacher Standards and Practices Commission . . .

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Doctor Zero: Crimes Against The Party

Joe Koday — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 00:01:21 +0000

The Left is mobilizing to protect Roman Polanski from being extradited to the United States, after his arrest by Swiss authorities for the crime of raping and sodomizing a 13-year-old girl in 1977, then fleeing from justice. Polanski spent his thirty years in exile from the United States on a rocky island off the coast of Madagascar, where he subsisted on a diet of roots and grubs. His only companion was a mangled Barbie doll with a cracked face, which he named “Natasha.” No, not really. He’s actually lived a life of opulence in Europe, hailed as a great artist, toasted in the salons of Paris. The only thing he’s been deprived of is the thrill of threatening to leave America when a Republican wins the presidency . . .

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Doctor Zero: A Memo to the Global Warming Cult

Joe Koday — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:01:55 +0000

Dear global warming fanatics, Please. Stop. You’re embarrassing yourselves. Take a deep breath, and try to understand what has happened to you during the past month. You need to accept that your dreams of global domination are over. Increasingly shrill attempts to terrify the masses into ignoring Climagate are only making you look foolish. The con job you’ve been running for the last thirty years is busted forever . . .

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Doctor Zero: Common Decency

Joe Koday — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:01:52 +0000

Marine Lance Corporal Matthew A. Snyder was twenty years old when he died in a non-combat vehicle accident in Iraq. Four years later, his father Albert has committed to a grueling battle on the front lines of free speech, where he mans the crumbling ramparts of common decency. The odds would seem to be stacked against Albert Snyder. Marines don’t pick easy battles, and neither do their fathers . . .

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Doctor Zero: Guns or Butter

Joe Koday — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:01:47 +0000

Some 15,000 Americans died last year because they didn’t have it. As many as five million more experienced a significant reduction in their quality of life, including mental and emotional trauma as well as diminished health, without it. Although large majorities of those Americans fortunate enough to have it are satisfied with what they have, many of the poor who need it most desperately simply cannot afford it. The government already exercises a great deal of control over it. Lives could be saved if we made its purchase mandatory, and subsidized those of limited means, to make ownership universal . . .

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Doctor Zero: The End of Mondays

Joe Koday — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:01:24 +0000

Another “jobs bill” is crawling through Congress. This one has a mere $15 billion price tag, making it a largely symbolic gesture — $15 billion is roughly what taxpayers spend to ferry Nancy Pelosi and her royal family around, especially when Nancy decides the hors d’oeuvres are not to her taste, and the Air Force must divert the plane to France. If the president wants to use government power to dramatically boost employment, there’s a much simpler program he should propose: Abolish Monday . . .

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Doctor Zero: Love the Warriors

Joe Koday — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 00:01:03 +0000

“You don’t have to love the war, but you have to love the warrior.” — Private Johnathon Millican.

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Doctor Zero: Representation Without Taxation

Joe Koday — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:01:49 +0000

A correspondent recently raised the question of reforming the American electoral system so that only those who pay income tax are allowed to vote. It’s a provocative notion, even though it Ain’t Gonna Happen . . . at least, not on this side of a systemic breakdown that puts everything on the table , , ,

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Doctor Zero: The Terms of the Deal

Joe Koday — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 00:01:43 +0000

This weekend may see the fateful vote on ObamaCare, or it may be passed with twilight’s last deeming. There is not much time left for Americans to consider what is about to be done to them, and raise their voices in a protest loud enough to frighten nervous Democrats out of their parliamentary maneuvers. The ruling class wants this bill badly enough to interpret anything less than fierce protest as implied consent . . .

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Doctor Zero: What Freedom Demands

Joe Koday — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:01:46 +0000

Tonight, self-appointed wise men in Washington are steamrolling the objections of sixty to seventy percent of the population, and forcing a massive health-care bill down our throats “for our own good.” Presumably the backroom deals, corrupt payoffs, Congressional Budget Office accounting tricks, threats of unconstitutional parliamentary maneuvers, and betrayals of principle are also for our own good. What do you know? Banana republics turn out to be the highest evolution of government — the only form of the State equipped to take proper care of its citizens, by lying to them and trapping them in legislative cages over their howling protests . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Weapons Given To Us

Joe Koday — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:01:42 +0000

A race began today, when the President signed his health-care takeover bill. The vast majority of Americans opposed to this legislation have two election cycles in which to defeat it. If 2010 does not see a Republican House of Representatives, the first victims will disappear under the leading edge of a tax and regulation avalanche. A complete GOP takeover of Congress and the White House in 2012 could begin the process of repeal, and the implementation of real “reforms” that will actually improve the quality, and reduce the cost, of medical care. Even such a transfer of power would not end the race — the same spirit and organization necessary to put the Republicans in office will be needed to keep them focused on the task at hand — but at least the rumble from a trillion tons of unsustainable liability would begin to fade behind us.

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Doctor Zero: A Word to the Weary

Joe Koday — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:01:51 +0000

I get a lot of email from people who ask if the final degeneration from capitalism to collectivism is now inevitable. Entitlements are never repealed, after all, and we just got saddled with a back-breaking entitlement, piled atop a national debt that was already crushing us. It seems like it would take a miracle just to undo the damage Barack Obama has done in a single year… and that would just get us back to where George Bush left us. Dependency, unemployment, economic contraction, and socialist politics are a perpetual-motion engine of national decline . . .

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Doctor Zero: The Principle of Repeal

Joe Koday — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:01:44 +0000

The early battle cry of “Repeal and Replace!” has become stuck in a few Republican throats. The thinking among “top Republicans” is that outright repeal of ObamaCare might be impossible, leading to frustration among an energized base that demands nothing less. There is also some apprehension that an uncompromising push for repeal will alienate moderate and independent voters in otherwise winnable states . . .

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Doctor Zero: Tales of Valor

Joe Koday — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 00:01:36 +0000

HBO’s mini-series The Pacific, the encore to its sensational World War II mini Band of Brothers, is well under way. So far, The Pacific has been decent, but not the equal of its illustrious predecessor. It’s taken several episodes to begin developing memorable characters, something the original series accomplished within its first hour. This might be partially due to the acting, which is serviceable, while the original cast was hitting grand slams in every scene. No one has really jumped off the screen except William Sadler’s “Chesty” Puller” man history tells us was not easily forgotten . . .

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