Jim Yardley

Humpty Dumpty Health Insurance

What kind of idiot would try to start a company, not necessarily a huge company, but ANY company by first lying about the costs of your product, then telling potential customers that they are going to get non-optional features attached to this new product. These are going to be features that the customer didn't ask for, and doesn't want, and won't use.

And Just Who are the Racists Again?

If an individual or a group was utterly consumed with concern about a race, and used race as the sole litmus test for evaluating anything, you’d say that such people were racists, wouldn’t you?

Those Were the Good Old Days

In days gone by, whenever we looked at the incredibly dysfunctional political center of America, Washington, D.C., the most common question that came to mind was “What the hell were they thinking?!” I, for one, am very glad those days are past us now.

The Fairy Dust of Borrowing

As President, Barack Obama is fond of stating the obvious as if it were a profound and insightful truth, particularly when Congress even hints at cutting up his national credit card. Yes, a nation must pay for the debts it has accrued. No one that I know of has ever said otherwise. Even under a staggering debt of $17,000,000,000,000 (that’s seventeen TRILLION, for those keeping score). I am confident that no one has ever said, “Hey, let’s declare bankruptcy and just walk away from it all!”

The Government Actually Can Help Small Businesses

Saying that our government can actually help small business sounds like the punch line to a pathetically weak joke, but it actually is possible.

Bell Bottomed Idiots

Think back (if you’re old enough) to those halcyon days when Haight-Ashbury, Woodstock, bell bottoms and anti-just-about-anything protests were the definition of “cool.”

What is the Real Issue in Syria?

For the past two weeks, the Obama administration has flip-flopped around like a fish out of water. Obama and his crack foreign policy team have been looking for a way to avoid the military response that Obama, himself, threatened a year ago if Bashar al Assad employed chemical weapons against the “rebels” trying to oust him from his seat of absolute power in Syria.

Progressive Hate the “C” Word

Most of you are thinking, "The C-word? Don't you mean the N-word?" No, the "C"-word. The C-word dominates everything that the Progressives think about and abhor about America. The "C"-word, you see, is COMPETITION.

Whence Comes the “Moral High Ground”

The continuing disasters in the Middle East, particularly the bloodbaths in Syria and Egypt, bring forth claims from leftists and Progressives that “something must be done.” I blush to admit that those on the right are equally verbose in calling for doing something.

Now The Barbarians are Inside the Gates

In the past few decades a discovery in western Turkey has excited the archaeological world no end. An early “city”, with perhaps a few thousand inhabitants has been discovered at a site that archaeologists have named “Çatalhöyük” (and since the word is Turkish, don’t even think of asking how to pronounce it).

The Math for the 2014 Senate Races is Wrong

Pundits keep trying to determine the number of Senate seats that Republicans must win to take over the majority in the Senate after the 2014 elections. No matter how favorable the chances of Republican pickups might be in November 2014, and no matter how many seats the Republicans actually win, the math that is being bandied about is wrong.

Do I “Profile” People?  Yes, but Everyone Does

I profile people constantly. All that really means is that I like to be fashionable, because apparently the fashion of profiling other human beings is pretty much a universal constant. It has existed for millennia, and it is certainly transnational as well as being found in every race and culture on the planet.

What’s Good for the Democrats is Good for, well, the Democrats

Harry Reid is throwing around threats of a so-called “nuclear option” in the Senate. Again.

And This is a Surprise?

President Obama’s decision to delay implementation of the so-called employer mandate has caused a great deal of discussion among the punditocracy and talking heads.

Are We a Nation of Idiots?

Most people would respond to the question “Are you an idiot?” with a strongly negative answer, and depending on the specifics of the situation (and their blood alcohol level), might punctuate that response with a roundhouse shot to the questioner’s nose.

Abandon the United Nations?

What are we going to do about the United Nations? Exactly what has the U.N. accomplished? I will grant that the U.N. began with the most noble and loftiest of intentions, but does it still embody those intentions?

Will No One Rid Me of this Troublesome Priest?

The primary question in any scandal are inevitably reminiscent of Watergate: What did the he or she know, and when did they know it?

How Hard Can it Really Be to Use English Properly?

I really hate being picky about the way Progressives operate, but the lousy education that our unionized public schools offer their students proves that the low-information voter is being swindled. I think, even for Progressives, that is going a little TOO far.

Our Right, Our Duty

…Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government…

Thomas Jefferson certainly had a way with words, such as these from the Declaration of Independence. No matter what political persuasion you prefer, unless of course you are a monarchist or a theocrat, Jefferson’s first fifteen words not only encapsulate the core of what Americans see as the proper relationship between the people and their government but succinctly describe where 21st Century America has more or less “gone off the rails.”

It’s For My Own Good?

I happened across an as-yet-to-be-published review in the New York Review of Books of a newly released book by Sarah Conly. The review itself is apparently scheduled for publication on March 7, 2013 and it has been authored by that famous (or if you prefer, infamous) Obama regulatory "czar", Cass Sunstein.