By the speed with which Democrats are railroading the so-called stimulus package through Congress, we can infer that the package is very probably a bad bill. Why the hurry?
Answer: because it is not actually a stimulus package. It is something else.
Republicans are right to oppose it.
HJH
The Economic Nationalist is pleased to learn that, in one of his final acts as president, George W. Bush has commuted the terribly excessive sentences of U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. Readers who do not recall the case will find a brief review of it by following the hyperlink. It remains to a future president to pardon the men of felony, but at least Messrs. Ramos and Compean will now be returned to their suffering families.
HJH
In response to this and this, a reader identifying herself as Jane Doe writes the following, published here with permission.
Funny you should post this. I’m a childless career woman with a high IQ, although most emphatically not a feminist, and when I read your last post, I just nodded in agreement without commenting.
My reasons for being childless: I married my high school sweetheart. We were going to have children, but we could barely support ourselves, so we were waiting until we had more money. (My grandmother was appalled; my grandfather and several of my great-uncles were in the same line of work as my husband and had no trouble supporting wives and children at the same age. That was before feminism changed the economy so that employers didn’t have to pay a man enough to support a family.) By the time we were more solvent, well, he left me. Not for any particular reason he could give; I think it was just that he grew up in a broken home, so it seemed normal to him. His father was married four times, and his mother ran off when he was a baby and was never heard from again. My husband didn’t learn any concept of sticking with a relationship. His parents were 17 when they conceived him, by the way. Three years later and he’d have been aborted, as would my first boyfriend and my high school best friend. This is what encouraging premarital sex did to people.
I hoped to marry again, but finding someone who wants to commit and raise a family these days is hard. It would have helped if I’d been religious, but unfortunately, when I was in my teens I allowed my parents to pressure me out of my natural inclination to be deeply religious, and I didn’t find my way back until I was in my 30’s. Just another of the ways in which today’s society tears apart the things that hold us together and keeps us on the right track when we don’t have the wisdom to figure it all out for ourselves.
Now I’m 38. I’m considering having some of my eggs frozen because at my age, that’s the only way I’ll have any chance at all, but as I’m still single and have no prospects, I’m not at all sure I’ll ever take it, or that I ought to. I don’t blame the men I meet; if I were a man, I’d want to marry a woman in her 20’s, whose chances of conceiving and delivering a healthy child are much better than mine are.
I’m very bitter, I admit it, at the way our society has discouraged people from making commitments and having real relationships until they’re so old that having children requires expensive and sometimes risky medical assistance. I’m not the only adult who’s approaching middle age alone, childless and lonely.
Barack Obama, soon to be 44th president, has been remarkably surefooted during the present executive transition period, nor has he given us any new reason to suspect that his administration might handle its role in our economy incompetently. Politically, looking ahead, among other smooth moves, Mr. Obama subtly reminds us that the Crash of 2008 happened on George W. Bush’s watch.
Is Roland Burris of Illinois entitled to take the seat the U.S. Senate has denied him today?
The short answer is, no. For a longer answer, well, let’s untangle this.