Conservative Chronicle

Friday December 06, 2019

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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'At issue this week...    Democrats  by Wayne Allyn Root\nMy Thanksgiving column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal listed quite a few reasons to be thankful for President Donald J. Trump. But it’s still technically Thanksgiving weekend, and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates deserve credit, too.\n I’M THANKFUL the Democratic candidates are so awful. Even former President Barack Obama is disgusted. Have you seen Obama’s comments? He believes they’re too radical and extreme to win. Might be the first time I’ve ever agreed with my old Columbia College classmate. \n Obama also reportedly told a Democratic candidate that former Vice President Joe Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win the White House. By the way, Biden is in fourth place in a new poll in New Hampshire. Sen. Bernie Sanders now leads the field. \n But Obama is no fan of Sanders either. Politico Magazine reports that Obama warned he will step in to try to prevent Sanders from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. \n Then there’s Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She was the new leader for about a month. The latest national Quinnipiac University poll shows Warren plunging by half. She was at 28% last month. Now she has free-fallen to 14% and third place. \n Why is this happening? Because the Democrats have no candidate who can beat Trump. That’s why Democrats cling to a new flavor of the month. It’s all about hope and desperation. \n The latest flavor of the month is Pete Buttigieg. I’m sure my liberal critics will be shocked to hear I couldn’t care less that he’s gay. I’m a libertarian when it comes to bedroom issues. Mayor Pete’s big problem: He’s a small-town mayor with zero accomplishments. \n His town (South Bend, Indiana) is falling apart. Crime is through the roof. Violent crime is dramatically higher than that in many neighboring towns. His own police department hates him. He should be home dealing with that mess. But nope. He thinks he deserves to be president of the United States. My educated guess is he couldn’t win reelection as South Bend mayor. \n Then there’s ex-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He’s got three big problems. First, he’s a billionaire in a party that despises wealth and success. Second, he’s a straight old white guy in a party that despises straight old white guys. And third, he’s the most boring speaker in world history. \n These Democrats learned all the wrong lessons from Trump’s election. They think Trump won because he’s a billionaire. Not true. Trump won because he’s got charisma, celebrity, an out-of-the-box personality, tremendous world-class energy and the perfect message.\n THAT’S precisely why Tom Steyer, the first billionaire to jump in the Democratic presidential race, has spent tens of millions. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, he’s at zero percent. Even Rep. Tulsi Gabbard beats Steyer. \n Being a billionaire isn’t a positive in the Democratic Party. But in the end, Steyer has the same problems as Bloomberg: He’s a stiff. He’s boring and thoroughly unlikable on television. All the money in the world can’t change that. \n Then we come to the message. Bloomberg just said the United States needs “an awful lot more immigrants, rather than less.” That may play in New York City, where English is no longer the main language. But in the rest of America, Bloomberg just committed political suicide. \n Meanwhile, President Trump just announced in an interview with Bill O’Reilly that he’s designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Bravo. Now that’s what real Americans want to hear.\n THIS Thanksgiving weekend, I am thankful Democrats have no candidate to compete with Trump. I’m thankful Democrats still don’t speak the language of middle-class Americans. And I’m thankful that President Trump does. \n  \n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:baf837eef7eac1b4504645727ca2c4a5' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'This Week's Conservative Focus . . . Prosperity & Gratitude\nPope Francis has made a number of public statements decrying the waste of food around the globe. Most recently, he voiced his support for the objectives of the World Food Programme. He echoed the words of his predecessor, St. John Paul II, who called food waste “a paradox of abundance.” Francis criticized a “culture of waste” that is caused, he says, by “mechanisms of superficiality, negligence and selfishness.” \n POPE Francis is correct, at least in part. The amount of food that goes to waste in the United States alone is staggering and — dare I say it — sinful. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s somewhere between 30 and 40% of our total food supply every year. \n Try to imagine the number of restaurants, bars, grocery stores and cafeterias in any town or city of even modest size. Consider: Every single one of these establishments throws food away every single day. Now multiply that by every town and city in the country. \n The problem, therefore, isn’t the amount of food; it’s getting the extra food to those in need. But as daunting an issue as that certainly is, it’s just logistics. It pales, by comparison, to the issue of producing enough food to feed people in the first place. \n I note this because Pope Francis is also fond of making statements that are sharply critical of capitalism and can fairly be construed at times as a preference for systems by which a smaller group of well-intentioned central planners decide what is to be produced — and where, and why, and how, and for whom. \n This, as we’ve seen in the countries where it has been tried, is what creates poverty and hunger — indeed, famine, starvation and death — on a massive scale. \n Josef Stalin’s agricultural “planning” for Ukraine resulted in the “holodomor” — widespread famine and the deaths of an estimated 6 million people. But even his murderous arrogance, stupidity and cruelty pale in comparison to Mao Zedong, whose disastrous central planning killed more than 40 million people in China — mostly from starvation. More recently, North Korea’s oppressive top-down economic control has starved millions of its people. Venezuela’s socialist government has reduced that once-prosperous country to destitute poverty and hunger. \n By contrast, the reason capitalist democracies like the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of Western Europe produce so much food is because they do not depend upon the inevitably flawed decisions of a handful of ultrapowerful people; they unleash the power of millions of individuals who, as entrepreneurs, start and grow farms and businesses involved in food production, packaging, preservation, refrigeration and transportation. These firms not only provide local food but also enable us to get Washington’s apples to Indiana, Florida’s oranges to Nebraska, Hawaii’s pineapples to Maine — and literally millions of tons of food to other countries. \n Entrepreneurs have created for-profit and nonprofit ventures across the country to address food waste and hunger. The startup Imperfect Produce, for example, buys produce that grocery stores don’t purchase from farmers because it is “ugly” or misshapen. Philadelphia’s Misfits Markets and Hungry Harvest in Baltimore are working to achieve similar goals. Robert Lee and Louisa Chen started the nonprofit Rescuing Leftover Cuisine in New York City in 2013 to combat food waste. In the six years since, they have collected and donated 3.1 million pounds of food, resulting in more than 2.5 million meals served in shelters across the city.\n IT IS possible for us to put our heads together and pool our resources to reduce or eliminate hunger in the United States. We have the production and transportation capabilities, and we have the food. \n In countries where not enough food is produced to feed the population, however, the problems are greater. They are systemic. They are typically attributable to the political and economic systems in place. Therefore, they are much, much  more difficult to address than the distribution of food to those in need in free and prosperous nations. \n Tufts University professor Alex de Waal has written brilliantly about this. In his 2018 book, “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” he writes that 70% of the deaths from starvation in the past 150 years were caused not by natural disasters but by government policies (British tariffs on the textile industry in India, Hitler’s “Hunger Plan” to eliminate “useless eaters,” Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”) and war. \n DeWaal’s work also reveals what happens when governments implement (or impose) policies based upon popular but flawed “scholarship.” In a 2018 interview with NPR’s Nurith Aizenmen, de Waal cites the notable example of 18th-century scholar Thomas Robert Malthus’ theory that population growth caused famine. History has debunked Malthus’ theories over and over again, de Waal explains; humans’ capacity for food production has kept up with population growth and even produced the surpluses we have now. \n Aizenmen writes: “’I call it a zombie concept,” says de Waal, ‘because it’s one that scholars of agriculture and economics have continually refuted, but it still keeps coming back to life to torment the living.’ It torments the living, he elaborates, because the fear that it engenders about population growth has periodically led authorities to pursue policies that — paradoxically — actually  did create famine.” \n Aizenmen calls de Waal’s perspective on famine “surprising.” But it’s really only a surprise if you don’t know much history (or you’ve been indoctrinated with Malthusian economics). \n On this Thanksgiving Day, we in the United States should give thanks for a political and economic system that frees us to produce enough to feed ourselves and leaves plenty of leftovers with which we can — given the ingenuity and innovation we’ve displayed for centuries — feed others.\n IT’S A little bit like the parable of loaves and fishes. Pope Francis should give thanks for this as well.\n November 28, 2019\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:1e03ac33253172bdcd042083efa1e4ac' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'This Week's Conservative Focus . . . Prosperity & Gratitude\nPope Francis has made a number of public statements decrying the waste of food around the globe. Most recently, he voiced his support for the objectives of the World Food Programme. He echoed the words of his predecessor, St. John Paul II, who called food waste “a paradox of abundance.” Francis criticized a “culture of waste” that is caused, he says, by “mechanisms of superficiality, negligence and selfishness.” \n POPE Francis is correct, at least in part. The amount of food that goes to waste in the United States alone is staggering and — dare I say it — sinful. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, it’s somewhere between 30 and 40% of our total food supply every year. \n Try to imagine the number of restaurants, bars, grocery stores and cafeterias in any town or city of even modest size. Consider: Every single one of these establishments throws food away every single day. Now multiply that by every town and city in the country. \n The problem, therefore, isn’t the amount of food; it’s getting the extra food to those in need. But as daunting an issue as that certainly is, it’s just logistics. It pales, by comparison, to the issue of producing enough food to feed people in the first place. \n I note this because Pope Francis is also fond of making statements that are sharply critical of capitalism and can fairly be construed at times as a preference for systems by which a smaller group of well-intentioned central planners decide what is to be produced — and where, and why, and how, and for whom. \n This, as we’ve seen in the countries where it has been tried, is what creates poverty and hunger — indeed, famine, starvation and death — on a massive scale. \n Josef Stalin’s agricultural “planning” for Ukraine resulted in the “holodomor” — widespread famine and the deaths of an estimated 6 million people. But even his murderous arrogance, stupidity and cruelty pale in comparison to Mao Zedong, whose disastrous central planning killed more than 40 million people in China — mostly from starvation. More recently, North Korea’s oppressive top-down economic control has starved millions of its people. Venezuela’s socialist government has reduced that once-prosperous country to destitute poverty and hunger. \n By contrast, the reason capitalist democracies like the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the countries of Western Europe produce so much food is because they do not depend upon the inevitably flawed decisions of a handful of ultrapowerful people; they unleash the power of millions of individuals who, as entrepreneurs, start and grow farms and businesses involved in food production, packaging, preservation, refrigeration and transportation. These firms not only provide local food but also enable us to get Washington’s apples to Indiana, Florida’s oranges to Nebraska, Hawaii’s pineapples to Maine — and literally millions of tons of food to other countries. \n Entrepreneurs have created for-profit and nonprofit ventures across the country to address food waste and hunger. The startup Imperfect Produce, for example, buys produce that grocery stores don’t purchase from farmers because it is “ugly” or misshapen. Philadelphia’s Misfits Markets and Hungry Harvest in Baltimore are working to achieve similar goals. Robert Lee and Louisa Chen started the nonprofit Rescuing Leftover Cuisine in New York City in 2013 to combat food waste. In the six years since, they have collected and donated 3.1 million pounds of food, resulting in more than 2.5 million meals served in shelters across the city.\n IT IS possible for us to put our heads together and pool our resources to reduce or eliminate hunger in the United States. We have the production and transportation capabilities, and we have the food. \n In countries where not enough food is produced to feed the population, however, the problems are greater. They are systemic. They are typically attributable to the political and economic systems in place. Therefore, they are much, much  more difficult to address than the distribution of food to those in need in free and prosperous nations. \n Tufts University professor Alex de Waal has written brilliantly about this. In his 2018 book, “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine,” he writes that 70% of the deaths from starvation in the past 150 years were caused not by natural disasters but by government policies (British tariffs on the textile industry in India, Hitler’s “Hunger Plan” to eliminate “useless eaters,” Mao’s “Great Leap Forward”) and war. \n DeWaal’s work also reveals what happens when governments implement (or impose) policies based upon popular but flawed “scholarship.” In a 2018 interview with NPR’s Nurith Aizenmen, de Waal cites the notable example of 18th-century scholar Thomas Robert Malthus’ theory that population growth caused famine. History has debunked Malthus’ theories over and over again, de Waal explains; humans’ capacity for food production has kept up with population growth and even produced the surpluses we have now. \n Aizenmen writes: “’I call it a zombie concept,” says de Waal, ‘because it’s one that scholars of agriculture and economics have continually refuted, but it still keeps coming back to life to torment the living.’ It torments the living, he elaborates, because the fear that it engenders about population growth has periodically led authorities to pursue policies that — paradoxically — actually  did create famine.” \n Aizenmen calls de Waal’s perspective on famine “surprising.” But it’s really only a surprise if you don’t know much history (or you’ve been indoctrinated with Malthusian economics). \n On this Thanksgiving Day, we in the United States should give thanks for a political and economic system that frees us to produce enough to feed ourselves and leaves plenty of leftovers with which we can — given the ingenuity and innovation we’ve displayed for centuries — feed others.\n IT’S A little bit like the parable of loaves and fishes. Pope Francis should give thanks for this as well.\n November 28, 2019\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:1e03ac33253172bdcd042083efa1e4ac' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'This Week's Conservative Focus . . . Prosperity & Gratitude\n \nAt a time when our country seems as divided as ever and many are talking as if the end times are coming, it’s more important than ever to look at what we should be thankful for.\n UNEMPLOYMENT is at its lowest level in nearly 50 years. Poverty is down, too. Since 1990, average life expectancy in the United States increased from 75.4 to 78.6 years. Our workplaces are also safer, as demonstrated by the 30% decline in the rate of workplace deaths from 1992 to 2017 and a 69% drop in the rate of workplace injury and illness. \n Our cities and country as a whole are safer, with crime rates falling dramatically. In fact, Washington, D.C. experienced an incredible increase among the world’s safest cities ranking. It jumped from the 23rd safest city in the world in 2017 to number 7 in 2019. Negative indicators, such as teen pregnancies and abortion rates, are also declining. \n While some argue that real wages have been stagnant for several decades — when measured with the correct inflation deflator and adjusted for fringe benefits, taxes and transfers — real incomes of ordinary Americans have unquestionably increased. The same is true of real median household income, especially after adjusting for household size. \n While millions of manufacturing and other “middle-skill” jobs have disappeared, that decline has been more than offset by an increase in the number of high-skilled jobs. In fact, a look at the data reveals that while the middle class has indeed thinned out, it’s because more and more Americans are joining the upper class, a phenomenon that we should applaud. Meanwhile, the share of the low-income households has shrunk over the years. \n Few of us realize how much better off we are today than were our grandparents and great-grandparents. For all the negative talk about how families struggle to survive on their current wages compared with prior decades, the fact is that this notion has more to do with our rising expectations of what we should be able to consume than with any genuine decline in our ability to consume. Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for instance, shows that if the average worker today wanted to achieve the living standard of 1950, he or she would only need to work for 11 weeks annually. To achieve the living standard of 1975, one would only need to work 23 weeks.\n OF COURSE, most people don’t choose to work so few weeks. We instead work most of the year to increase our relative standard of living compared to prior years. As economist David Autor explains in his research that asks, “Will automation take away our jobs?” (the answer is no), “Material abundance has never eliminated perceived scarcity.” In other words, the fact that most of us don’t realize how much more we have than those who came before us doesn’t negate the fact that we are incredibly lucky. \n Our lives, especially those of lower-income workers, would get even better if state and local governments eliminated some of the policies that artificially obstruct access to better labor markets. Land and zoning regulations are great examples. These rules play an oversized role in increasing housing costs in higher-wage areas, making it harder for low-income workers to move and improve their situation. \n Likewise, occupational-licensing statutes raise barriers separating workers from better jobs. These requirements obstruct interstate mobility, as licenses typically can’t be transferred across jurisdictions. They also increase the price of goods and services like child care, which hurts parents who wish to stay in the work force. \n There are too many examples to list in this column. Yet removing just the barriers mentioned here would lead to more opportunities and better lives for those who are now frozen out of the gains enjoyed by many.\n THE TRUTH is that if you look for bad news, you can easily find it. Some trends, such as the hike in opioid overdoses and teenage suicides or the fact that some workers have permanently dropped out of the labor force, are sources of real concern. However, looking for bad news is what most of us do most of the year. During this time of Thanksgiving, we should take a moment to focus on the good news. It will help us feel grateful for our lives.\n November 28, 2019\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:14ef4e559118160c5c68db3f6de38319' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'At issue this week...    Democrats  by Wayne Allyn Root\nMy Thanksgiving column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal listed quite a few reasons to be thankful for President Donald J. Trump. But it’s still technically Thanksgiving weekend, and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates deserve credit, too.\n I’M THANKFUL the Democratic candidates are so awful. Even former President Barack Obama is disgusted. Have you seen Obama’s comments? He believes they’re too radical and extreme to win. Might be the first time I’ve ever agreed with my old Columbia College classmate. \n Obama also reportedly told a Democratic candidate that former Vice President Joe Biden doesn’t have what it takes to win the White House. By the way, Biden is in fourth place in a new poll in New Hampshire. Sen. Bernie Sanders now leads the field. \n But Obama is no fan of Sanders either. Politico Magazine reports that Obama warned he will step in to try to prevent Sanders from winning the Democratic presidential nomination. \n Then there’s Sen. Elizabeth Warren. She was the new leader for about a month. The latest national Quinnipiac University poll shows Warren plunging by half. She was at 28% last month. Now she has free-fallen to 14% and third place. \n Why is this happening? Because the Democrats have no candidate who can beat Trump. That’s why Democrats cling to a new flavor of the month. It’s all about hope and desperation. \n The latest flavor of the month is Pete Buttigieg. I’m sure my liberal critics will be shocked to hear I couldn’t care less that he’s gay. I’m a libertarian when it comes to bedroom issues. Mayor Pete’s big problem: He’s a small-town mayor with zero accomplishments. \n His town (South Bend, Indiana) is falling apart. Crime is through the roof. Violent crime is dramatically higher than that in many neighboring towns. His own police department hates him. He should be home dealing with that mess. But nope. He thinks he deserves to be president of the United States. My educated guess is he couldn’t win reelection as South Bend mayor. \n Then there’s ex-New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg. He’s got three big problems. First, he’s a billionaire in a party that despises wealth and success. Second, he’s a straight old white guy in a party that despises straight old white guys. And third, he’s the most boring speaker in world history. \n These Democrats learned all the wrong lessons from Trump’s election. They think Trump won because he’s a billionaire. Not true. Trump won because he’s got charisma, celebrity, an out-of-the-box personality, tremendous world-class energy and the perfect message.\n THAT’S precisely why Tom Steyer, the first billionaire to jump in the Democratic presidential race, has spent tens of millions. In the latest Quinnipiac poll, he’s at zero percent. Even Rep. Tulsi Gabbard beats Steyer. \n Being a billionaire isn’t a positive in the Democratic Party. But in the end, Steyer has the same problems as Bloomberg: He’s a stiff. He’s boring and thoroughly unlikable on television. All the money in the world can’t change that. \n Then we come to the message. Bloomberg just said the United States needs “an awful lot more immigrants, rather than less.” That may play in New York City, where English is no longer the main language. But in the rest of America, Bloomberg just committed political suicide. \n Meanwhile, President Trump just announced in an interview with Bill O’Reilly that he’s designating Mexican drug cartels as terrorist organizations. Bravo. Now that’s what real Americans want to hear.\n THIS Thanksgiving weekend, I am thankful Democrats have no candidate to compete with Trump. I’m thankful Democrats still don’t speak the language of middle-class Americans. And I’m thankful that President Trump does. \n  \n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:baf837eef7eac1b4504645727ca2c4a5' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'LESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: December 2, 2019\nIt’s possible that the world’s oldest coin-operated machine was a holy water dispenser devised by the ancient Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria. When a coin was inserted, the machine released a stream of water that allowed a worshipper to cleanse himself before entering a temple to pray. Heron also invented mechanical toys, a syringe and a steam-powered engine.\n CHRISTMAS movies capture hearts, but they don’t grab many Academy Awards. Even “It’s a Wonderful Life,” that ultimate Christmas classic, had five Oscar nominations but no wins. One film on the short list of Christmas films that won Oscars is “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” (2000), which brought Rick Baker and Gail Rowell-Ryan an Oscar for best makeup. Edmund Gwenn won best supporting actor for portraying Kris Kringle in “Miracle on 34th Street” (1947). And a best original song Oscar went to Irving Berlin for “White Christmas” from “Holiday Inn” (1942). \n On the morning of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941, the repair ship USS Vestal was moored beside the battleship USS Arizona. Two direct bomb hits combined with explosions from the attack on the Arizona blew the Vestal’s captain and hundreds of crewmen overboard. Seven crew members were killed, and the ship was severely damaged, but the Vestal wasn’t finished. After repairs, it continued in service through the end of World War II. \n Winter isn’t typical ice cream season, so Bill and Dorothy Harmsen, owners of the Jolly Rancher ice cream shop in Golden, Colorado, began selling candy to keep sales up during the cold weather. That’s how the Jolly Rancher candy company was born. It started with Fire Stix, a flat bar of cinnamon hard taffy. Watermelon, green apple and other flavor “stix” followed. At one point, the Harmsens estimated they were making a million pounds of candy a week in the Jolly Rancher candy kitchen.\n THE standard playing card suits of clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds originated in France in the 15th century. Earlier German playing card suits were acorns, leaves, hearts and bells. In Switzerland, the suits were (and sometimes still are) acorns, flowers, shields and bells. The oldest suits on playing cards from Italy and Spain are coins, cups, swords and caveman-style clubs, all derived from the Middle East and North Africa, where playing cards originated. Back then, each suit consisted of 10 numbered cards and three face cards: a king, a cavalier and a knave, but no queen. \n We tend to think of all conifer trees, like the spruce, the fir and the pine, as being evergreen, but Mother Nature reliably provides an exception to every rule. Larch, bald cypress and dawn redwood are part of a small group known as deciduous conifers. They produce cones and have needle-like leaves that turn red or gold, drop off in the fall and then regrow fresh and green in spring.\n TRIVIA \n 1. The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World included what type of structure in Alexandria, Egypt? \n A) Lighthouse \n B) Mausoleum \n C) Palace \n D) Pyramid\n 2. According to the classic film, where did the “Miracle on 34th Street” take place? \n A) Central Park \n B) Empire State Building \n C) Grand Central Terminal \n D) Macy’s department store\n 3. Pearl Harbor is located on which Hawaiian island? \n A) Hawaii (the “Big Island”) \n B) Lanai \n C) Molokai \n D) Oahu\n 4. Which American painter lived at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico? \n A) Louise Nevelson \n B) Georgia O’Keeffe \n C) Jackson Pollock \n D) Gilbert Stuart\n 5. According to legend, what hand was Wild Bill Hickok holding when he was shot during a poker game in 1876? \n A) Full house: aces over tens \n B) Royal flush in diamonds \n C) Straight: king-high \n D) Two pair: black aces and eights\n 6. From 1992 to 1995, the Cones Hotline in the U.K. fielded phone calls from citizens about what subject? \n A) Healthcare \n B) Ice cream trucks \n C) Recycling \n D) Road construction\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n\n ANSWERS \n 1) The lighthouse, or pharos, of Alexandria was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. \n 2) “Miracle on 34th Street” centers on Macy’s department store. \n 3) Pearl Harbor is on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. \n 4) Georgia O’Keeffe had a house at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico. \n 5) According to legend, Wild Bill Hickok’s “Dead Man’s Hand” was two pair: black aces and eights. \n 6) The U.K.’s Cones Hotline (as in traffic cones) fielded citizens’ questions about road construction.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:03e8fb85507e44d806e26114659cfb68' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'DEAR MARK: November 29, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Levy.gif\" />\nDEAR MARK:   \n I thought the ridiculous impeachment hearings were over but now comes the news that more hearings will be held by the House Judiciary Committee. Instead of seeing Adam Schiff’s smug face, our televisions will now be graced, or should I say disgraced by Jerry Nadler’s condescending mug. Haven’t we had enough of this clown show, and don’t Democrats realize the American public is bored with all this nonsense? – Fed Up Fred \n Dear Fred: \n To this day Democrats haven’t figured out the reasons for President Trump’s popularity but they have figured out they have nothing else to run on except impeachment. Let me rephrase that, Democrats know that President Trump’s policies make him popular, they just refuse to accept it. \n As for why the Democrats are holding another hearing, on the surface it’s simply a procedural move. According to Wikipedia, the House Judiciary Committee is “charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement entities. The Judiciary Committee is also the committee responsible for impeachments of federal officials.” \n So by law this makes sense, however we’re talking Washington politics and Democrats so the deeper motives should always be examined. Democrats know they are a blind squirrel when it comes to dealing with President Trump and they are hoping to stumble upon an acorn. By extending the hearings they are praying for some sort of miracle bombshell that the public will finally grasp onto and drive President Trump’s poll numbers down. It didn’t work with the Mueller report or the Schiff hearings and I don’t believe it will happen with the Nadler hearings either. \n The second part of the Democrat’s plan is the “death by a thousand cuts” strategy. They know they don’t have enough evidence for a conviction in the Senate, so they are hoping that the constant barrage of negative “fake news” will disable the president in 2020. That might be a fine strategy with your average politician, but as we’ve come to learn, President Trump is not your average politician. Death by a thousand cuts begins with one cut and the Democrats and their media don’t realize, they are slicing at an Abrams Tank with a Cub Scout knife and President Trump’s skin has yet to bleed. Their endless attacks are firing up President Trump’s base and even some independents so good luck finding that acorn Jerry.\n DEAR MARK: \n It was recently learned through DNA testing that Hunter Biden is the father of a child in Arkansas. The mother wants child support as one can imagine but now the younger Biden wants his finances sealed. According to one story I read, Biden’s attorneys argued that releasing that financial information would create “undue prejudice, annoyance, embarrassment, and/or oppression.” Do you think? Hunter Biden has become more embarrassing than Billy Carter or Roger Clinton. I don’t think the embarrassment will be on Hunter but more on his dad. What do you think? – Elaine in Illinois \n Dear Elaine: \n Of course the “annoyance and embarrassment” will be on Sleepy Joe. Nobody would care if it was “Hunter Jones” serving on the board of Burisma. This is a gift that not only helps President Trump, but it will also be used by the Democrat contenders who are out to defeat Biden. \n This is an obvious scandal, yet journalists are taking Joe at his word that he never talked to Hunter about his involvement with the controversial Ukrainian company. My question for the former vice president is simple: “Why didn’t you ask your son why he needed to hitch a ride on Air Force Two to the Ukraine?” Also wouldn’t the Secret Service need to know where little Hunter was going, and wouldn’t he need a security detail? Oh silly me, it was probably take your kid to work day.\n DEAR MARK: \n Lately I’ve been reading that the Democrat presidential field is so weak that none of the candidates can defeat President Trump. I guess that’s why Mike Bloomberg entered the race  and why there’s rumors that former Massachusetts governor Duval Patrick might also get in. Is there any Democrat who can defeat President Trump? – Looking for Answers \n Dear Looking: \n Not really. The only Democrat who can defeat President Trump in 2020 is if Donald Trump switches to the Democrat Party and then runs against himself. \n   \n E-mail your questions to mark <a href=\"mailto:levy92@aol.com\">levy92@aol.com</a>.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:de343921ad17877db2972fcc9eb64d6a' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'EDUCATION: December 4, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Williams.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nThis year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their children into colleges by cheating on entrance exams or bribing athletic coaches. They paid William Singer, a college-prep professional, more than $25 million to bribe coaches and university administrators and to change test scores on college admittance exams such as the SAT and ACT. As disgusting as this grossly dishonest behavior is, it is only the tiny tip of fraud in higher education.\n ACCORDING to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2016, only 37% of white high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 70% of them. Roughly 17% of black high school graduates tested as college-ready, but colleges admitted 58% of them. A 2018 Hechinger Report found, “More than four in 10 college students end up in developmental math and English classes at an annual cost of approximately $7 billion, and many of them have a worse chance of eventually graduating than if they went straight into college-level classes.” \n According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, “when considering all first-time undergraduates, studies have found anywhere from 28 percent to 40 percent of students enroll in at least one remedial course. When looking at only community college students, several studies have found remediation rates surpassing 50 percent.” Only 25% of students who took the ACT in 2012 met the test’s readiness benchmarks in all four subjects (English, reading, math and science).\n IT’S CLEAR that high schools confer diplomas that attest that a student can read, write and do math at a 12th-grade level when, in fact, most cannot. That means most high diplomas represent fraudulent documents. But when high school graduates enter college, what happens? To get a hint, we can turn to an article by Craig E. Klafter, “Good Grieve! America’s Grade Inflation Culture,” published in the Fall 2019 edition of Academic Questions. In 1940, only 15% of all grades awarded were A’s. By 2018, the average grade point average at some of the nation’s leading colleges was A-minus. For example, the average GPA at Brown University (3.75), Stanford (3.68), Harvard College (3.63), Yale University (3.63), Columbia University (3.6), University of California, Berkeley (3.59). \n The falling standards witnessed at our primary and secondary levels are becoming increasingly the case at tertiary levels. “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses” is a study conducted by Professors Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa. They found that 45% of 2,300 students at 24 colleges showed no significant improvement in “critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing by the end of their sophomore years.” \n An article in News Forum for Lawyers titled “Study Finds College Students Remarkably Incompetent” cites a study done by the American Institutes for Research that revealed that over 75% of two-year college students and 50% of four-year college students were incapable of completing everyday tasks. About 20% of four-year college students demonstrated only basic mathematical ability, while a steeper 30% of two-year college students could not progress past elementary arithmetic. NBC News reported that Fortune 500 companies spend about $3 billion annually to train employees in “basic English.” \n Here is a list of some other actual college courses that have been taught at U.S. colleges in recent years: “What If Harry Potter Is Real?” “Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame,” “Philosophy and Star Trek,” “Learning from YouTube,” “How To Watch Television,” and “Oh, Look, a Chicken!” The questions that immediately come to mind are these: What kind of professor would teach such courses, and what kind of student would spend his time taking such courses? Most importantly, what kind of college president and board of trustees would permit classes in such nonsense?\n THE FACT that unscrupulous parents paid millions for special favors from college administrators to enroll their children pales in comparison to the poor educational outcomes, not to mention the gross indoctrination of young people by leftist professors.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:f2d8917932e14c7f617634ba0ef4bf8d' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'CHARITY: December 2, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Thomas.gif\" />\nIt is a truism that a blackmailer is rarely satisfied. Once the payoffs start, there often is no end to them.\n THE Chick-fil-A fast-food chain is about to learn this hard lesson, far too late, as many victims of blackmail and extortion generally do. \n For conservatives and evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A has been a model company that has consistently stood against the “anything goes” spirit of the age. It’s founder, the late S. Truett Cathy, ordered that his restaurants be closed on Sundays to allow employees to attend church and spend time with their families. \n When LGBT activists learned the company donated to charities that supported the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman and declared a boycott of the restaurants, others demonstrated their support by strongly patronizing them. \n Without any noticeable new pressure, Chick-fil-A announced it would no longer be donating to Christian charities like The Salvation Army, an organization not known for political activism. A company spokesman said future donations would go to charities in support of education, the homeless and ending hunger. \n If this weren’t enough, the restaurant chain also announced it is sending a $2,500 donation to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a left-wing organization that lists some Christian ministries as “hate groups.” Among them is the Family Research Council, which describes itself as a “pro marriage and pro-life” lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C.\n AS REPORTED by the Washington Times, “In 2012, gunman Floyd Lee Corkins shot building manager Leo Johnson after storming the FRC building in Washington, D.C., carrying 50 rounds of ammunition and a backpack of Chick-fil-A sandwiches. The shooter later told the FBI that he found FRC on the SPLC’s list of ‘anti-gay groups.’” \n Upon hearing of Chick-fil-A’s donation to the liberal organization, FRC President Tony Perkins said, “Not only has Chick-fil-A abandoned donations to Christian groups, including the Salvation Army, it has donated to one of the most extreme anti-Christian groups in America.” Perkins called on conservatives to seek a fast-food alternative, but boycotts are rarely successful and besides, the sandwiches taste good. \n Appeasement doesn’t work when there is a shooting war between enemies and it doesn’t work in a culture war in which the left takes no prisoners. Each time an inch is given by any conservative individual or group, it merely whets the appetite of the secular progressives for more concessions. When conservative people stand on principle, their adversaries usually find another target. Most Christians are familiar with the verse “resist the devil and he will flee from you.” (James 4:7). It can similarly work with earthly adversaries. \n Individuals and organizations are free to contribute to any group they wish, but Chick fil-A’s donation to the SPLC is as strange as a pro-life organization donating money to Planned Parenthood. \n What has gotten into them is anyone’s guess since management has not explained its decision. It is unlikely, though, that S. Truett Cathy would have approved. \n The newly “converted” rapper Kanye West dropped a music video last week from his latest album, “Jesus Is King.” The fourth track is titled “Closed on Sunday” and is meant as a tribute to Chick-fil-A. The lyric includes “Closed on Sunday, you’re my Chick-fil-A/Hold the Selfies, put the ‘Gram away/Get your family, y’all hold hands and pray/When you got daughters, always keep ‘em safe.’”\n LET’S SEE if the same LGBT activists that have attacked the restaurant chain come after West and if they do whether he can prevail against the pressure.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:046914ac6d0810fbf4330e5edcfb09d3' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'THE LEFT: December 3, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Prager.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nWe all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that’s all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad person. To hate the manifestly good is a sure sign of being bad.\n SUCH is the case regarding the left’s hatred of The Salvation Army. You don’t have to be a Christian — I am not — to appreciate the goodness of the people who run and work for The Salvation Army. They devote their lives to helping the poorest, the saddest, the loneliest and the most troubled among us — completely irrespective of race, gender, transgender identity, faith or no faith. And they do it for almost no money. They do it because of their Christian faith. \n They provide these downtrodden people with not only food and shelter but also human warmth and love. And they offer the people they care for the one thing most likely to get them out of their predicament: meaning. They offer it; they do not coerce it. And while the vehicle for this meaning — Christian faith — may not be your faith or mine, so what? It takes a truly narrow-minded bigot to want to deprive people of meaning just because that meaning is rooted in faith or in a faith other than their own. \n Yet, leftists — most especially LGBTQ groups, which spread a remarkable amount of hate in the name of “love” — seek to crush The Salvation Army. They threaten and pressure whoever supports The Salvation Army. “British pop singer Ellie Goulding,” the Wall Street Journal recently reported, “threatened to cancel an appearance at the Dallas Cowboys’ Thanksgiving halftime show, which will celebrate the army’s red-kettle campaign, unless it made a ‘pledge or donation to the LGBTQ community.’ She backed down after the Salvation Army assured her it serves needy members of that community.” \n Most depressing of all, Chick-fil-A, a business owned by a Christian and heretofore run according to Christian principles, caved in to LGBTQ organizations’ pressure and stopped funding The Salvation Army, while it has also donated to a left-wing group that hates the good, the Southern Poverty Law Center. \n I never thought I’d see the day when The Salvation Army would be hated by a substantial number of Americans or lose the support of a Christian-run business. \n But given the left’s loathing of virtually all things good — such as America, Israel, traditional Christianity and Judaism, the Boy Scouts, the nuclear family ideal, Thanksgiving and America’s founders — it is not surprising.\n AS I HAVE said for years, the left destroys everything it touches: music, art, Christianity, Judaism, economies, universities, high schools, late-night comedy, pro football, women’s likelihood of finding happiness, men’s likelihood of maturing, the Boy Scouts and the innocence of children (think “Drag Queen Story Hour” for 5-year-olds at libraries), to cite some of the more obvious examples. \n And while it destroys good institutions, the left never builds a viable replacement. Is there a left-wing equivalent to the Boy Scouts, a left-wing institution that helps mold boys into responsible men? Of course not. The left destroys, but it builds nothing — except state power. Or, to take the present example, is there a left-wing equivalent to The Salvation Army? No, there isn’t. \n “We believe we are the largest provider of poverty relief to the LGBTQ+ population,” The Salvation Army said in a statement after Chick-fil-A announced its decision. As the Wall Street Journal concluded, “Considering it serves nearly 25 million people every year, that’s likely true.” \n But all the good The Salvation Army does means nothing to the left. The left judges people or institutions not by their behavior but by their beliefs. And The Salvation Army believes — as has every civilization in recorded history, and as former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton did until a few years ago — that marriage should be defined as the union of a man and a woman. To the left, that belief outweighs helping 25 million people including married gays.\n ONE OF the great puzzles in contemporary American life is whether there is anything the left could do to make Americans understand how destructive it is. If suppressing free speech at colleges and on the internet, fomenting interracial anger, supporting those who wish to annihilate Israel, allowing (and even encouraging) teenage girls to have their healthy breasts surgically removed if they think they are a boy and trying to crush The Salvation Army don’t do it, probably nothing will.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:dbbdf5ed4ae142d01c520d7da6191e82' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'TRUTH: December 3, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Murchison.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nThe Anglican Church of Canada clutches its throat at the prospect of — Lord have mercy — shutting down its ministries and works 20 years from now. You know — putting up the “Closed” sign, the public demand for said ministries dwindling more with every passing year. So sharply have Anglican membership rolls declined since 2000 that, according to an internal study, naught but the buildings will remain in 2040.\n WHICH, as many will recognize, is an odd assumption to entertain concerning any of the Lord’s enterprises — the same Lord who parted the Red Sea (I’ll come back to this) and seems easily capable of repopulating empty churches and moving powerfully forward. Canadian Anglicanism’s prospects nevertheless put in mind the consequences of life in an age when, seemingly, you don’t have to believe anything. \n The ongoing deconstruction of belief — the dismissal of truths you or others see as nontruths — leaves humans free to believe as they like. “Truth”? Who says so, pal? Falsehood? What might that be but someone else’s truth turned around and dressed in new clothes? \n Truth happens to be the special currency of religion. A church — a faith — invites acceptance of its premises, presenting them as needful and valid. Say you don’t want to believe. In that event, you keep away from the church and its ancient truths, such as that very instrumental truth we hear of every year at this time: the Savior’s birth. \n We’re constantly encouraged to get rid of unwanted beliefs. We are well acquainted, for instance, with “fake news,” meaning anything disparaging of President Donald Trump. Trump’s trope isn’t unique. The Never-Trump media, the impeachment lobby — these groups take pleasure in dismissing Trumpian rhetoric as shot through with lies and frauds.\n WHO STARTED the great set-to over credibility in politics is unclear — probably both sides, each reacting to the other. Wrong and right lack their former statuses as political touchstones. It’s all opinion, point of view, real stuff versus made-up junk. A phone call to the Ukraine is either “perfect” or an impeachable offense. How do we know which, the standards for verification having been compromised? The very possibility of verification — from the Latin “veritas,” meaning “truth” — having been bent out of shape? \n You can see how, in such an environment, Christianity’s “truth” claims can be seen as wobbly, and participation in Christian rites — in Canada at least — seen as a time-wasting enterprise. \n So “prove” to me God opened that Red Sea! Prove it how? With a cellphone shot? Nah, some Hebrew PR guy could have faked the shot. We can’t, it seems, in experiential terms, prove squat. Try to show me in physical terms you did what you said you did. Either I trust you or I don’t. \n Here we are, adrift on a vast sea of claims and counterclaims. Canadian Anglicanism’s plight stems — if I may tender a claim of my own — from the shriveling of the human capacity for belief in the unseen. What happened to authority as credibly worked out in teaching and practice over long ages? It savors of “authoritarianism,” doesn’t it? Actually, no. Authoritarianism is someone making you do certain things. Authority is ancestral, made more credible by the witness of the credible. You can call the Virgin birth of Jesus, the origin point of the present season, fake news if you like, but that’s just your unvarnished opinion — against the grave and loving testimony of minds and mouths designated over the centuries as wise and fruitful. \n Nobody in the 21st century can compel belief in the perfection of Trump’s phone calls or in the right of the New York Times to consign the caller to the ninth circle of political hell. Yet where does this leave us? Swaying back and forth, forever and ever, between competing viewpoints? Uncertain what to believe and what not to? Disabled from the planting of things beautiful to us but, for all anyone knows, worthless to life at large?\n THE PAST half-century or so of American history, with its takedown of authority and truth, makes inevitable the moral frenzy that is our daily bread. And will, say, impeachment help to make truth accessible, credible as in the olden time? Pardon me as I roll on the ground, laughing hysterically.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:a4cf3d9bb8ffd0ebddf17c9235184b21' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'LENDING: December 4, 2019\nWashington do-goodism almost always fails to help the people it is supposed to because politicians ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to a congressional plan to put payday lenders and other short-term lending institutions, such as the burgeoning online lenders, out of business.\n THESE are lenders that provide the service of last-minute or emergency loans — typically of between $100 and $600 — to mostly low-income Americans or those with poor credit scores. Liberal “consumer advocacy groups” and liberals in Congress demonize these companies as modern day Shylocks, the nefarious lender in Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” who demands a pound of flesh if loans aren’t repaid on time.  \n Reps. Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., and Glenn Grothman, R-Wis., are the cosponsors of a bill called the Veterans and Consumer Fair Credit Act (the bill has nothing to do with veterans, and several veteran groups have written to complain of this ruse). It would cap interest rates on short-term and emergency loans at 36%. Critics of short-term lenders say they “target” low-income and minority Americans. The left says this new law would “save” low-income Americans between $5 and $10 billion a year. \n No one forces anyone to go to these stores or use online lenders. They do so because these folks feel it’s the best and most convenient option for them. \n The bill would make it illegal for a lender to provide someone with a $250 cash advance and then pay back the loan a week later with a $10 fee. But why? Can’t consenting adults make up their own minds about whether they want to engage in this transaction? Or is the left so contemptuous of the poor they think their voters are incapable of making sound everyday decisions on their own? \n Perhaps it is the Washington politicians who are financially clueless here. Well, more than half of all Americans live paycheck to paycheck today. Oftentimes these workers have poor credit scores, so they can’t get a traditional loan or consumer credit from a bank. About 1 in 4 Americans without a credit card don’t qualify, or if they do, they ring up debt on their Visa card, which is far more expensive than opting for a short-term payday or online loan.\n ACCORDING to a 2019 Federal Reserve Board study, almost 4 in 10 Americans today would have difficulty covering an emergency expense of $400. \n For Americans tangled in these kinds of financial tight spots, payday lenders are saviors, not devils. The $5 to $20 fee for an emergency cash loan is a small price to pay. Except that many in Congress don’t think so. They complain that a $10 or $15 fee for a $200 loan paid back in two weeks can have an annual percentage rate interest of up to 400%. But an annual percentage rate, or APR, is a totally irrelevant statistic on a 10- or 14-day cash advance. The Wall Street Journal has calculated that the APR for a bounced check can sometimes exceed 1,300%. Are we going to eliminate credit cards, too? \n One vital on-the-street reality that the consumer advocates and politicians fail to take into account is that payday and online lenders have actually helped low-income areas in an important way: They have largely replaced loan sharks. The interest rate on an unpaid loan to a loan shark isn’t a $10 or $20 fee; it’s a broken arm. \n It also speaks volumes of the motivation of the Fair Credit Act and its supporters that the law would exempt credit unions. These are tax-exempt institutions that are direct competitors to the payday and online short-term lenders — and they’d like nothing better than to run the competition out of town, just like McDonald’s would love to shutter Burger King. Credit unions are also major funders of many of the consumer interest groups hammering payday lenders. So it might be too charitable to even say that Fair Credit Act supporters are primarily driven here by a misguided concern for the financial well-being of lower-income Americans.\n BUT THE motives really don’t matter here; the results do. Run short-term lenders out of business, as some states have already done, and the victims are the people who can no longer use the convenience of these services that were once down the street. There is evidence that many Americans living near a state border drive out of the state without payday lenders into the states that have them. If Garcia and Grothman have their way, Americans won’t even have the option of doing that anymore. It’s a law that only a loan shark could love.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:c051f366353e7cf9332f50d4d29bb9e0' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'IMPEACHMENT: November 29, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Lowry.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nNancy Pelosi said she undertook impeachment “prayerfully,” and apparently what she was praying was that she could get it over with as soon as possible.\n THE HOUSE is preparing to send a flagrantly incomplete factual record to the Senate as the basis of an effort to remove a sitting president for the first time in our history. \n Pelosi has affected a posture of heavy-heartedness since the outset of the process, saying that “there’s no joy in this” and urging a somber spirit as Democrats pursue the facts wherever they may take them — so long as that’s not too far into an election year. \n In substantive terms, the Democrats had a good set of public hearings before Adam Schiff’s intelligence committee the past two weeks — with one gaping hole. They didn’t have anyone with first-hand knowledge of Trump’s directives on Ukraine or his state of mind. The closest was EU ambassador Gordon Sondland, who, still, could only “presume” a quid pro quo over the defense aid. \n There are people who probably don’t have to presume, and Sondland named some of them: Trump’s personal counsel Rudy Giuliani, acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. They all were closer to this than Sondland, yet Democrats are happy to make the guy from the outer bounds of the inner circle their “star witness” and forgo the inner circle. \n This makes no sense as an investigative matter. The logic of skipping the most knowledgeable witnesses is entirely political. Pelosi doesn’t want to spend an inordinate amount of time on impeachment, holding her vulnerable members hostage to an initiative that may not play well in their districts and ticking ever closer on the clock to the beginning of the campaign season.\n TO GET the more central witnesses requires litigation since they all have at least colorable claims of privilege. The Democrats don’t want to wait for the courts. Instead, Pelosi and Schiff have talked loosely of including an obstruction count in the articles of impeachment, even though some of the Trump claims might ultimately prevail. \n The minimum requirement of a historic impeachment case, only the fourth in our history, would seem to be a complete account of the facts. Schiff used to say as much: “We have to flesh out all of the facts for the American people. The seriousness of the matter and the danger to our country demands nothing less.” Now, the seriousness and the danger are demanding that Democrats rush things along so the president can be impeached by the end of the year. \n No matter how often Democrats say, “Let’s honor the Constitution,” their actions say, “Let’s check the box.” \n Democrats have had the difficulty from the beginning of trying to build an edifice of impeachment and removal atop the narrow foundation of the Ukraine episode, and now they aren’t even going to finish the edifice, content with what they could complete in a two-month investigation largely reliant on the testimony of people who weren’t around for the main events (former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch) or were out of the loop (former Trump Russia adviser Fiona Hill). \n It’s not as though getting a first-hand witness will weaken the Democratic case; it will in all likelihood make it stronger. But with every day that passes it becomes a little more absurd to say Trump should be impeached and removed when the public can make its own verdict in the election. Besides, Democrats know that impeachment is going nowhere in the Senate, so why bother locking down the case to make it worthy of the gravity of the process?\n THEY MIGHT as well go with what they have, a partisan impeachment pursued on a political timetable. During Bill Clinton’s impeachment, it was his defenders who were saying, “Let’s move on.” Now, it’s Trump’s pursuers, who prayerfully and sorrowfully want to get impeachment over with.\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:430a5012a1b3f7a26ce20f4df4e910c8' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'CHINA: December 3, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Buchanan.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nAt first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph. \n By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests — to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to China for trial — had been withdrawn.\n AND THOUGH the protesters’ demands escalated along with their tactics, from marches to mass civil disobedience, Molotov cocktails, riots and attacks on police, Chinese troops remained confined to their barracks. \n Beijing wanted no reenactment of Tiananmen Square, the midnight massacre in the heart of Beijing that drowned in blood the 1989 uprising for democratic rights. \n In Hong Kong, the police have not used lethal force. In five months of clashes, only a few have perished. And when elections came last month, Beijing was stunned by the landslide victory of the protesters. \n Finally, last month, Congress passed by huge margins in both houses a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act that threatens sanctions on Hong Kong authorities should they crush the rebels. \n When President Donald Trump signed the bills, the protesters now had the U.S. as an ally, and the Chinese reacted viscerally. \n An enraged Foreign Ministry declared: “The US ... openly backed violent criminals who rampantly smashed facilities, set fire, assaulted innocent civilians, trampled on the rule of law and jeopardized social order. \n “This so-called bill will only make the Chinese people ... further understand the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the United States. It will only make the Chinese people more united and make the American plot more doomed to failure.” \n Thus do the Hong Kong protesters appear victorious, for now. \n Sunday, black-clad masked protesters were back in the streets, waving American flags, erecting barricades, issuing new demands — for greater autonomy for Hong Kong, the release of jailed protesters and the punishment of police who used excessive force. \n This confrontation is far from over. \n Instead, it has escalated, and the U.S. government, having given up its posture of benevolent neutrality in favor of peaceful demonstrators for democracy, has become an open ally of often-violent people who are battling Chinese police inside a Chinese city. \n On Monday, China retaliated, suspending visits to Hong Kong by U.S. military planes and Navy ships and declaring sanctions on the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and half a dozen other U.S. agencies that promote democracy for interfering in the internal affairs of China. \n And there is another issue here — the matter of face. \n China has just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Revolution where Mao proclaimed, “China has stood up!” after a century of foreign humiliations and occupations.\n CAN XI Jinping, already the object of a Maoist cult of personality, accept U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of his country or a city that belongs to China? Not likely. Nor is China likely to accede to demands for greater sovereignty, self-determination or independence for Hong Kong. \n This would only raise hopes of the city’s eventual escape from its ordained destiny: direct rule by Beijing when the 50-year China-U.K. treaty regarding the transfer of Hong Kong expires in 2047. \n For Xi to capitulate to the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators could cause an outbreak of protests in other Chinese cities and bring on a crisis of the regime. \n Xi Jinping is no Mikhail Gorbachev. He is not going to let his people go. He is not going to risk a revolution to overturn the Maoist Revolution he has served his entire life. \n A ruler committing the atrocities Xi is committing today in the concentration camps in the Uighur regions of China is staying his hand in Hong Kong only so the world and the West cannot see the true face of the ideology in which this true believer believes. \n In providing moral support for protesters in Hong Kong who desire the freedoms we enjoy, America is on the right side. But to align the U.S. with the protesters’ cause, and threaten sanctions if their demands are not met, is to lead these demonstrators to make demands that Hong Kong’s rulers cannot meet and China will not allow. \n We should ask ourselves some questions before we declare our solidarity with the protesters engaging the Hong Kong police. \n If the police crush them, or if China’s army moves in and crushes the demonstrators whose hopes were raised by America’s declared solidarity, then what are we prepared to do to save them and their cause? \n Are we willing to impose sanctions on Beijing, such as we have on Venezuela, Iran and Vladimir Putin’s Russia?\n SOME OF us yet recall how the Voice of America broadcast to the Hungarian rebels of 1956 that if they rose up and threw the Russians out, we would be at their side. The Hungarians rose up. We did nothing. And one of the great bloodbaths of the Cold War ensued. \n Are we telling the protesters of Hong Kong, “We’ve got your back!” when we really don’t?\n', created = 1575616942, expire = 1575703342, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:f034dfc29ef9cdc8d15f6589ae38560e' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'CLIMATE: November 20, 2019\n“How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” insisted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction!”\n MANY people say that we’re destroying the Earth. \n It all sounds so scary. \n But I’ve been a consumer reporter for years, and I’ve covered so many scares: plague, famine, overpopulation, SARS, West Nile virus, bird flu, radiation from cellphones, flesh-eating bacteria, killer bees, etc. The list of terrible things that were going to get us is very long. \n Yet we live longer than ever. \n Now I’m told global warming is different. \n The Earth’s average temperature is rising. It’s risen 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit since 1880. The U.N. predicts it will rise another 2 to 5 degrees this century. If that happens, that will create problems. \n But does that justify what’s being said? \n “We have 12 years to act!” says Joe Biden. \n “The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change!” adds Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. \n Twelve years? That’s the new slogan. \n The Heartland Institute invited some climate alarmists to explain the “12 years” and other frightening statements they keep making. \n The alarmists didn’t even show up. They never do. They make speeches and preach to gullible reporters, but they won’t debate anyone who is skeptical. \n Over the years, I repeatedly invited Al Gore to come on my TV shows. His staff always said he was “too busy.” \n At a Heartland Institute event I moderated, climatologist Pat Michaels put the 12-year claim in perspective by saying, “It’s warmed up around 1 degree Celsius since 1900, and life expectancy doubled in the industrialized democracies! Yet that temperature ticks up another half a degree and the entire system crashes? That’s the most absurd belief!”\n ASTROPHYSICIST Willie Soon added, “It’s all about hand-waving, emotion, sending out kids in protest. It has nothing to do with the science.” \n Is that true? I wish the alarmists would show up and debate. \n Alarmists say, “Miami will soon be underwater!” \n Few serious people deny that the Earth has warmed and that sea levels are rising. But Michaels points out that even if the warming increases, humans can adjust. \n For example, much of Holland is below sea level. “They said,” Michaels recounts, “we’re going to adapt to the fact that we’re a low-lying country; we’re going to build these dikes. Are you telling me that people in Miami are so dumb that they’re just going to sit there and drown?” \n Climatology professor David Legates added a point the climate alarmists never make: “The water has been rising for approximately 20,000 years and probably will continue.” \n But aren’t sudden climate changes happening now? Aren’t hurricanes suddenly far more violent? \n “No they aren’t!” responded Michaels. “You can take a look at all the hurricanes around the planet. We can see them since 1970, because we’ve got global satellite coverage. We can measure their power... There is no significant increase whatsoever -- no relationship between hurricane activity and the surface temperature of the planet!” \n He’s right. That’s what government data shows. \n Nevertheless, activists and politicians demand the United States move toward zero carbon emissions. That would “put you back in the Stone Age,” says Michaels. \n Another myth is that carbon dioxide, the prime creator of greenhouse gases, threatens the food supply. \n But carbon dioxide helps plants grow. “There are places on Earth where it is greening up like crazy,” says Michaels. \n But if the crisis isn’t real, why do governments race to respond to it with regulations and big spending projects? Why is the U.N.’s Panel on Climate (IPCC) so alarmed? \n Well, IPCC does stand for Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.\n LEGATES says, “Governments want to keep control... Carbon dioxide becomes that molecule by which (they) can take control of your lives.” \n Government is the real crisis.\n', created = 1575616943, expire = 1575703343, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:13f0bcd3f9fca3d4e85b4c27b8ee9f37' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'DURHAM INVESTIGATION: November 28, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Tyrrell.gif\" />\nLast week, toward the end of the week, there appeared in our finest newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal — a spate of news stories that set official Washington’s mind at ease. As one of the great gazettes, the Washington Post, put it, “The Justice Department’s internal watchdog (that would be Inspector General Michael Horowitz) is expected to find in a forthcoming report that political bias did not taint top officials running the FBI investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign in 2016.” Nonetheless, the report will be criticizing “the bureau for systemic failures in its handling of surveillance applications, according to two U.S. officials.”\n WE SHALL have to wait until Dec. 9 to hear from Horowitz as to what those “systemic failures” were. Do these early reports on his work forecast a whitewash? It would appear so. But can anyone really take seriously that those “systemic failures” took place in the absence of bias? Such a claim requires a great deal of contortion. And the spate of stories last week suggests the form that contortion will take: Blame will fall not on Peter “We Will Stop Him” Strzok — the virulent hater of President Donald Trump who orchestrated the spying on the Trump campaign — but on a low-level lawyer named Kevin Clinesmith. We are led to believe by these stories that while Clinesmith was biased against Trump — Trump’s victory had “devastated him,” he wrote in an email — that bias never “tainted” his work or infected any of his colleagues. Many of whom, incidentally, are on record as sharing his bias. He was, you see, simply sloppy, or so the report is purported to say.\n I READ these happy, trouble-free news stories very carefully, and one thing struck me. Nowhere in any of the stories did anyone bother to ask the question: What precisely triggered the need for this investigation of the investigators? It did not start in a vacuum. Was it not largely precipitated by the discovery of the FBI’s pervasive use of the Hillary-financed Steele dossier, upon which the Strzoks of this world relied for spying on Trump officials, all of whom turned out not to be Russian agents, as the FBI alleged? \n Naturally, these stories skirt that issue. If Horowitz skirts that issue, too, his report will not amount to much, and we will have to look to Justice Department prosecutor John Durham for real answers. In April, Attorney General William Barr said, “I think spying on a political campaign is a big deal.” It has not ceased to be a big deal, even if Horowitz breezes over it.\n WHAT real grounds did the Obama administration have for its spying? That has never been satisfactorily explained. Consider the irony here. During the impeachment hearing, we have heard Democrat after Democrat intone gravely that nothing is more abusive than a president seeking to get foreigners to spy on a “political rival.” Yet is that not exactly what Obama did in letting the John Brennans and Peter Strzoks loose to spy on the Trump campaign with the help of foreign intelligence bodies, such as MI6? If it was wrong for Trump to try to get our ally Ukraine to investigate the Joe and Hunter Biden, as the Democrats assert, how can they possibly justify the Obama administration’s use of foreign intelligence bodies to spy on Trump? \n “Now, what you’re going to see, I predict, will be perhaps the biggest scandal in the history of our country,” said the president of the coming revelations from Durham. Let us hope he is right. Spygate dwarfs Watergate in seriousness. After all, the Obama administration was not caught in a third-rate burglary but in a high-level scheme to weaponize both domestic and foreign intelligence instruments against a political opponent. For over two years, I have been predicting the Justice Department would find evidence of FBI and CIA agents working together to spy on Trump operatives. The Durham investigation will bear this out. The media, of course, will try to pit Horowitz against Durham. Do not fall for it.\n', created = 1575616943, expire = 1575703343, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:be27a1a0842d29dd2a6fd03863f3f81a' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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user warning: Table './conserva_drupal/cache_filter' is marked as crashed and should be repaired query: UPDATE cache_filter SET data = 'CHARITY: November 26, 2019\n<img alt=\"\" src=\"http://www.conservativechronicle.com/sites/default/files/Thomas.gif\" style=\"width: 300px; height: 116px;\" />\nThanksgiving and Christmas seem to come earlier each year. Though the dates remain the same, the promotions from advertisers don’t.\n CHRISTMAS decorations are appearing before Halloween. Merchants can’t wait for Thanksgiving to end so they can promote “Black Friday,” itself beginning days and even weeks before the day after Thanksgiving. \n Catalogs fill my mailbox, all promoting stuff for which I have no room and little interest. Does anyone remember what they received last Christmas, if it wasn’t a big-ticket item like a car? OK, how about five years ago? Stuff wears out, goes out of style, or is eventually discarded. “Where’s the real stuff in life to cling to?” goes the song lyric. \n One answer is in a catalog worth having. It’s produced by the international humanitarian organization World Vision. Not only do they offer to construct water pipes from wells bringing clean water to villages in impoverished countries, but they also provide goats to poor families in Africa and other places that produce milk and income. \n It’s not only overseas where help is needed. According to World Vision’s website, “One in five children in the United States lives in a family struggling with poverty.” How can this be in the richest country on Earth with so many social service and public assistance programs available? There are many causes of poverty, a lack of an adequate education, unemployment, underemployment, addiction, familial abuse. World Vision offers help to those in need until they provide for themselves.\n HOW DOES it work? World Vision explains: “By engaging churches and organizations and providing a way for manufacturers and businesses to share excess resources with people struggling with poverty. In 2018, we were able to reach more than 4 million people, including 2.2 million children, through our various U.S. ministries.” \n What could you buy or give that would have such an immediate impact on so many lives? \n World Vision also has education resources. The goal is not to sustain people in poverty, but to help them reach financial independence, something especially conservatives who dislike big government should support: “At World Vision Teacher Resource Centers, they get to select free items a few times per year to stock up on school supplies, classroom materials, books, games, and incentives to keep students engaged in lessons. This ministry impacted 288,829 students and teachers at 788 schools nationwide in 2018.” How often do politicians equate true compassion with the number of people not dependent on government? \n There are also traditional child sponsorship programs, some with a new twist in which the child gets to pick his or her sponsor. \n The point is, what gives the most satisfaction? Is it toys for children who may already have enough, or is it changing another life, not only with toys, or money, or goats, but sending a message that another human being cares about them? Sometimes that is motivation enough for people who feel abandoned, unloved and unwanted.\n TRY it. I have. Even if you are doing it to make yourself feel good, that’s enough. It will do more than that for people without resources and without hope. It will make for a Christmas that is not only merrier for the giver and receiver, but it will truly be a gift that keeps on giving for perhaps generations to come.\n', created = 1575616943, expire = 1575703343, headers = '', serialized = 0 WHERE cid = '2:769d47ef4bdab10eeb2c9ccd95de8a01' in /home/conserva/public_html/includes/cache.inc on line 112.
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This Week's Cover Topic

Thanksgiving blessings from the Democrats

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:24pm

At issue this week... Democrats by Wayne Allyn Root My Thanksgiving column in the Las Vegas Review-Journal listed quite a few reasons to be thankful for President Donald J. Trump. But it’s still technically Thanksgiving weekend, and the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates deserve credit, too. I’M THANKFUL the Democratic candidates are so awful. Even former President Barack Obama is disgusted. Have you seen Obama’s comments?...

This Week's Focus Topic

Giving thanks for a system that creates prosperity

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:26pm

This Week's Conservative Focus . . . Prosperity & Gratitude Pope Francis has made a number of public statements decrying the waste of food around the globe. Most recently, he voiced his support for the objectives of the World Food Programme. He echoed the words of his predecessor, St. John Paul II, who called food waste “a paradox of abundance.” Francis criticized a “culture of waste” that is caused, he says, by “mechanisms of superficiality...

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Giving thanks for a system that creates prosperity

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:26pm

The end is not nigh, there is much to be thankful for

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:25pm

This Week's Conservative Focus . . . Prosperity & Gratitude At a time when our country seems as divided as ever and many are talking as if the end times are coming, it’s more important than ever to look at what we should be...

Thanksgiving blessings from the Democrats

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:24pm

Leslie’s trivia bits - test your knowledge

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:22pm

LESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: December 2, 2019 It’s possible that the world’s oldest coin-operated machine was a holy water dispenser devised by the ancient Greek engineer Heron of Alexandria. When a coin was inserted, the machine released...

More impeachment hearings, Biden’s baby, and Trump vs Trump

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:21pm

DEAR MARK: November 29, 2019 DEAR MARK: I thought the ridiculous impeachment hearings were over but now comes the news that more hearings will be held by the House Judiciary Committee. Instead of seeing Adam Schiff’s smug face, our...

Fraud in higher education

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:20pm

EDUCATION: December 4, 2019 This year’s education scandal saw parents shelling out megabucks to gain college admittance for their children. Federal prosecutors have charged more than 50 people with participating in a scheme to get their...

Chickening out

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:20pm

CHARITY: December 2, 2019 It is a truism that a blackmailer is rarely satisfied. Once the payoffs start, there often is no end to them. THE Chick-fil-A fast-food chain is about to learn this hard lesson, far too late, as many victims of blackmail...

The left hates the Salvation Army. That’s all you need to know about the left

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:19pm

THE LEFT: December 3, 2019 We all know some individuals who are so obviously good and kind that we are certain if anyone were to dislike them, that’s all we would need to know about the person. We would immediately assume he or she is a bad...

Ain’t it the truth?

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:18pm

TRUTH: December 3, 2019 The Anglican Church of Canada clutches its throat at the prospect of — Lord have mercy — shutting down its ministries and works 20 years from now. You know — putting up the “Closed” sign, the...

Congress bans short-term lending; the poor pay a high price

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:18pm

LENDING: December 4, 2019 Washington do-goodism almost always fails to help the people it is supposed to because politicians ignore the Law of Unintended Consequences. Nowhere is that more evident than when it comes to a congressional plan to put...

The check-the-box impeachment

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 - 6:16pm

IMPEACHMENT: November 29, 2019 Nancy Pelosi said she undertook impeachment “prayerfully,” and apparently what she was praying was that she could get it over with as soon as possible. THE HOUSE is preparing to send a flagrantly...

In Hong Kong, it’s U.S. vs. China now

Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - 12:45am

CHINA: December 3, 2019 At first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph. By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests — to allow...

Climate myths

Tuesday, December 3, 2019 - 12:44am

CLIMATE: November 20, 2019 “How dare you? You have stolen my dreams and my childhood!” insisted teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg at the United Nations. “We are in the beginning of a mass extinction!” MANY people say...

Washington awaits John Durham

Sunday, December 1, 2019 - 8:58pm

DURHAM INVESTIGATION: November 28, 2019 Last week, toward the end of the week, there appeared in our finest newspapers — the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal — a spate of news stories that set official...

Gifts that keep on giving

Sunday, December 1, 2019 - 8:56pm

CHARITY: November 26, 2019 Thanksgiving and Christmas seem to come earlier each year. Though the dates remain the same, the promotions from advertisers don’t. CHRISTMAS decorations are appearing before Halloween. Merchants can’t wait...

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