WhatFinger


Arnold Ahlert

Arnold Ahlert was an op-ed columist with the NY Post for eight years.

Most Recent Articles by Arnold Ahlert:

Better a A War On Whiners Than Christmas

When I was in high school, kids divided themselves into different cliques: jocks, nerds, pretty girls, preppies, hipsters, druggies, straights etc. Yet despite those differences, I was lucky enough to have classmates who mostly got along. The exception? The downheads. Kids for whom life was something to whine about incessantly. So incessantly all you wanted to do was avoid them like smallpox. So where are those kids today?
- Friday, December 16, 2011

Anybody But Obama

Much glee has been emanating from the mainstream media and their Democrat allies regarding the general ineptitude of the Republican candidates for president. This has caused a great deal of consternation among those appalled by the current occupant of the White House. Yet if a CBS poll quietly dumped on the public Friday, the day any news that does not accrue to Mr. Obama's benefit is disseminated, all is not well in Progresso-ville. The poll asks, "Does the president deserve to be re-elected?" 41 percent say yes, 54 percent say no.
- Monday, December 12, 2011

Connecting the Feckless Foreign Policy Dots

There are no coincidences in politics. There is only calculation, and few administrations have been as calculating as this one as we head into the 2012 presidential campaign. Moreover, nowhere has that calculation been as circumspect as this president's treatment of Israel, or its reticence in doing what is necessary to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. It's time to connect some dots that need connecting.
- Thursday, December 8, 2011

Can We Keep Our Republic?

Americans, whether they know or not, are in for the fight of their lives. It's been one week since the biggest story of the last three years was published by Bloomberg News, and maybe the only thing more fascinating than the story itself is the level of indifference it's gotten from our so-called mainstream media. Remember the $700 billion in TARP funds used to bail out the banks? Chump change. Or more to the point, collateral for the $7.77 trillion made available by the Federal Reserve to bail out financial institutions all over the world.
- Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Cyber Crack-heads

By the time you read this, Thanksgiving will have passed. But I wanted to get this down while the feelings were fresh. Like most Americans, I attended a get together with more than a few kids. Unlike most Americans, at least I'm betting it's most Americans, I was pretty dismayed by the behavior of those kids — and more than a few adults as well.
- Monday, November 28, 2011

Water Water Everywhere, But Not a Drop to Think

In a column I wrote back in July, I quoted George Orwell's immortal words regarding the power of government to alter reality: "In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy. The heresy of heresies was common sense." On November 17th, the European Union revealed what ought to be considered a "watershed" moment of philosophical bankruptcy: Brussels bureaucrats banned all advertising which claims water can prevent….dehydration.
- Monday, November 21, 2011

Walking along Avenue J(ew)

On Wednesday, it was reported that some vandal had sprayed a sign at the Brooklyn subway stop on Avenue J, and turned it into Avenue "Jew." Here are some of the comments left by readers. All of the grammar, syntax and spelling--or lack thereof--has been left intact:
- Friday, November 18, 2011

Military Scandal, Media Blackout

Let me preface the facts of this column with two disclosures: first, I have a deep and abiding respect for the United States military. With rare exception these people are and have been some of the finest Americans who have ever lived. Currently, they are asked to put their lives on the line even as they are constrained by absurdities such as the Rules of Engagement, pipe dream counter-insurgency tactics known as "winning hearts and minds," and the political machinations of an administration more than willing to use them as pawns in a bid for re-election.
- Monday, November 14, 2011

Open-Mics and Closed Minds

There's nothing like a "live mic moment" when it comes to getting the unvarnished truth. Yet it is hard to decide which part of this story is more revealing: the incident itself, or the subsequent reaction by the Fourth Estaters whose commitment to the standards of journalistic integrity — or perhaps more accurately JournO-listic integrity — seemingly never reach the bottom of an apparently bottomless barrel.
- Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Camping Out in La-La Land

Looking back at my life immediately following college, I've come to the conclusion that, to put it in terms the OWS crowd can understand, I suffered from low self-esteem and/or never got in touch with my inner child. Armed with my diploma and the aforementioned lack of self-worth, I secured my first post-graduate job: working as a cashier and a stock clerk in a Brooklyn liquor store. Even "worse?" I didn't mind it one bit.
- Sunday, October 30, 2011

No Soup For You!

On Wednesday at the OWS movement, it was decided that some ninety-nine percenters are "more equal" than others. Those cooking for the group are staging a protest, because they are angry that "professional homeless people" and "ex-cons masquerading as protesters" have been eating the same free food the chefs provide to the rest of the group.
- Friday, October 28, 2011

Another Howler From Harry

Any American still wondering why the economy is in the tank can stop wondering. In one magnificently revealing statement, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid encapsulated everything that is wrong with having Democrats in majority control of the federal government. “The massive layoffs we’ve had in America today--of course they’re rooted in the last administration--and it’s very clear that private sector jobs are doing just fine, said Reid on the floor of the Senate Wednesday.
- Friday, October 21, 2011

Bagman Tim

It's too bad the overwhelming majority of the Occupy protesters have no clue about economics. If they did, they wouldn't be anywhere else but camped out in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., where the notion "too big to fail" has just been given a dose of steroids.
- Monday, October 17, 2011

Are Colleges Too Big to Fail?

By now most Americans are quite familiar with the concept "too big to fail." Yet most people assume that it is related to some large bank or corporation whose failure would lead to a cascade of economic consequences most politicians believe would be more than Americans are willing to bear.
- Thursday, October 13, 2011

Why aren’t they upset when their child is mugged in school?

When something is critically important it bears repeating. Sunday it was revealed that another high school in NYC essentially cooked the books to allow failing students to pass. The NY Post secured a written memo from an October 2010 meeting entitled "Panel for Academic Success" which approved a series of changes for the "school grading policy" at Washington Irving HS. Read 'em and weep:
- Tuesday, October 11, 2011

I Stand With the ‘One Percenters’

According to the mobs occupying Wall Street and other financial centers around the nation, they represent 99% of the country. That's means out of a nationwide population of roughly 300 million people, they speak for 297 million of us. Well not us. I'll take my chances with the other 3 million, or the One Percenters if you will. And I have a solution for dealing with people like me: quarantine us.
- Friday, October 7, 2011

Tim, Liz and Bev Equals Moe Larry and Curly

Remember the Three Stooges? Moe, Larry and Curly entertained a generation of kids with antics that were a combination slapstick comedy mixed with unrelenting stupidity. Most comedy today is much more "sophisticated." So where do we find today's Three Stooges? Inhabiting the government, or trying to. I present to you Exhibits A,B, and C--or if you prefer, Treasury Secretary Timothy "Moe" Geithner, Massachusetts Democrat Senate candidate Elizabeth "Larry" Warren, and North Carolina Democrat Gov. Bev "Curly" Perdue.
- Wednesday, September 28, 2011

No Acknowledgment of Israel? No More Money

Shortly before taking the podium to address the United Nations' General Assembly last week, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas said everything the world needs to know about where the so-called peace process is headed. Speaking to an assembly of 200 senior representatives of the Palestinian community in the United States, Abbas laid his cards on the table. "They talk to us about the Jewish state, but I respond to them with a final answer: We shall not recognize a Jewish state," he proclaimed.
- Monday, September 26, 2011

‘Jobbing’ America

Below is one section — out of 451 Sections — of the president's American Jobs Act. The internet-accessible pdf. file for this particular piece of proposed legislation totals 155 pages. Read as much as you can stand. My comments below.
- Monday, September 19, 2011

Carville knows a few things about ‘crazy’

Yesterday Democrat political operative James Carville wrote a piece for CNN offering the president advice on how to get his administration back on track. That part of Carville's column is between him and the president. It was the penultimate paragraph of Carville's post I found fascinating:
- Friday, September 16, 2011

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