What does this tell you about the quality of life in Chicago, supposedly "the city that works"?

Chicago Population Sinks to 1920 Level

The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that during the decade ended in 2010, Chicago's population fell 6.9% to 2,695,598 people, fewer than the 2.7 million reported back in 1920.

Now it could be that this startling population decline is the result of decades of misgovernment and tax increases, coupled with poor-quality schools, sky-high crime rates and a declining regional economy. On the other hand, maybe people are simply getting fed up with Chicago winters in this era of global warming…

Posted by tmg110 at 9:03 AM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 16 February 2011 9:13 AM EST

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Here's a really disturbing story from the Egyptian street, reminding us that revolutions often have their ugly side, and that the journalism trade can sometimes be dangerous:

CBS News: Lara Logan sexually assaulted, beaten while covering Egypt president Hosni Mubarak's exit for '60 Minutes'

Logan is now hospitalized in the United States, and is said to be recovering from this horrific attack.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:50 AM EST

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Very often, the choices placed before a statesman range from bad to worse. The ability to craft a least-worst policy, and the moral courage to implement it, are the qualities that separate a Bismarck or a Kissinger from, well, an Obama.

Look at the mess that the Obama Administration has made of US foreign policy in the Middle East. Caught by surprise when popular demonstrations began to destabilize the regime of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, the President and his people reacted with deer-in-the-headlights paralysis. Instead of acting, they reacted, to the dismay of our allies and the delight of our enemies in the region.

Of course, the Administration faced an excruciating dilemma. Mubarak, though no Saddam Hussein, was nonetheless an iron-fisted dictator. But he was also a key US ally whose maintenance of Anwar Sadat’s peace agreement with Israel was the lynchpin of US policy in the region. So the decision about what to do when he ran into trouble on the home front was a difficult one. Obama and his team seemed incapable of making that tough call. Depending on what day it was, and who you were listening to, the Administration wanted Mubarak gone ASAP, they wanted him to stick around for an “orderly transition,” the Muslim brotherhood was a moderate, secular organization (!), etc, etc. The net effect was to alarm, disappoint or disgust all out allies in the region, while confirming our enemies in their belief that America under Obama is a paper tiger.

Then Obama Administration’s handling of this crisis reminds me of Winston Churchill’s stinging 1936 characterization of the British government of his day: “So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent.”

As it happens, the outcome in Egypt was the best that could be expected: a military coup that got rid of Mubarak without bringing the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the only organized opposition party in Egypt, to power. But America’s ability to influence events has been seriously compromised by the Obama Administration’s feckless and irresponsible fumbling. Nothing good will come of this—mark my words.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:48 AM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 16 February 2011 8:43 AM EST

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Ugh. Media pundits and prognosticators across the political spectrum are still giddy over the "revolution" in Egypt. That the despised strongman, Hosni Mubarak, was outsted not by the mob but by a cabal of senior military officers, seems to have escaped everybody’s attention. In short, Mubarak fell victim to a military coup. When it became clear to the generals who run the show behind the scenes in Egypt that he had become a liability, they got rid of him. In so doing, the generals bought the time they need to stabilize the political situation and assure their own continued dominance.

So don’t believe all this hopeful chatter about the birth of Arab democracy. The September elections, if they’re held at all, will surely be rigged in such a way as to keep the Army in charge. The Egyptian generals didn’t retire Hosni Mubarak as a favor to liberal intellectuals or Western media pundits.

Posted by tmg110 at 9:05 AM EST

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Yesterday we heard via the media that a series of  bomb attacks had taken place in Kandahar, the main target being a an Afghanistan National Police station. Today we were able to Skype with PFC Gregg, who gave us the good news than no US troops were injured in the attacks. Sadly, however, some 65 Afghan nationals were killed or wounded. You can read more about it here.

Lexi also told us that the enemy attacked a US military installation that night, while she was on guard duty in one of the towers. This installation is only a couple of miles from Lexi's FOB, and she said that the sounds of the firefight were clearly audible. She added that one of the other tower guards could see muzzle flashes, tracer rounds and explosions. Once again, however, no US troops were killed or wounded.

 Needless to say, Lexi and her comrades are on high alert in anticipation of further attacks. So far during this deployment, no soldier of the 511th Military Police Company has been killed or wounded in action. God willing, and with the help of our prayers, the 511th will maintain that record in the months ahead.

Posted by tmg110 at 2:05 PM EST

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The United States spends a cool $40 billion per year on intelligence—not, obviously, of the IQ variety, or we wouldn’t have Obamacare, but to find out what’s going on around the world in counties and regions deemed vital to the national interest. So how well is that investment (as the Obama Administration prefers to call spending) paying off? Check it out:

CIA Director Leon Panetta helped touch off an avalanche of erroneous expectations Thursday when he testified that there was a "strong likelihood" that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would step down by the end of the day.

 

Within minutes, senior aides to Panetta sought to tamp down the impact, saying he was merely referring to media reports. But by then, the comments had ricocheted around the Internet, underscoring U.S. confusion about events unfolding in Egypt, as well as the perils of publicly weighing in on such developments while serving as director of CIA.

Now when I put these two things together in my head, they simply do not add up: (1) We’re spending—excuse me, investing—$40 billion so that Leon Panetta & Co. can gather and evaluate intelligence; (2) Leon Panetta is apparently getting his information from CNN. Call me hypher-critical, but somehow this story fails to inspire confidence in the (perhaps mislabeled) intelligence community…

Posted by tmg110 at 8:41 AM EST

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I like Mona Charen, but my goodness, she must have woken up in a cranky mood on the day that she wrote this column. In the course of an extended rant about how we baby boomers simply refuse to grow up and grow old, she launches the following rhetorical ICBM:

Yet why single out boomers? No one these days is encouraged to act his age. The Vermont Teddy Bear Company recommends sending stuffed animals to grown women for Valentine’s Day. There are also ads for “hoodie/footie” pajamas for people who haven’t waited up for Santa in well over a decade. The sexual innuendo in the ads doesn’t counteract the fact that they are peddling gifts more appropriate for six-year-olds.

My wife thinks that the Vermont Teddy Bear thing is stupid too—but apparently a lot of women don’t, or the company wouldn’t be spending big dollars year after year to peddle them on TV. As for the hoodie/footie PJs, well, if you live in those vast regions of the continental United States still untouched by global warming, they might actually count as a thoughtful gift.

I’m all for acting one’s age…most of the time. Sometimes, though, as the song reminds us, “For as rich as you are/It’s much better by far/To be young at heart. And I think that Ronald Reagan, for own, would agree with me. Remember that, Mona.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:12 AM EST

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PFC Gregg on patrol in Afghanistan, packing her M4 rifle:

Posted by tmg110 at 9:10 AM EST

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What would America look like tomorrow if Barack Obama had his way? Probably a lot like the way California looks today:

California’s new governor, Jerry Brown, must rapidly close a $25 billion budgetary shortfall. Right now it seems almost a hopeless task, since the state’s disastrous budget is merely a symptom, not the cause, of California’s much larger problems.

 

Take unemployment. It currently runs at 12.6 percent in California, the second-highest in the nation. Take livability. A recent Forbes magazine survey listing the 20 most miserable cities in the nation ranked four California municipalities in the top five.

 

Take education. California public schools test near rock bottom in national math and science scores. Take the business climate. A recent survey conducted among CEOs ranked California dead last for jobs and business growth.

 

Take taxes. California has the highest gasoline tax in the nation, and its combined sales-tax and local and state income-tax rates are among the nation’s steepest. California incarcerates the highest number of prisoners in the nation. It costs nearly $50,000 per year to house each one, near the highest per capita cost in the country.

That’s according to Victor Davis Hanson (a California native), in a post for National Review Online. He describes a dismal state of affairs in the nation’s most populous and—once upon a time—most prosperous state. But decades of lame-brained progressive governance have transformed the California dream into a grotesque nightmare. Now President Obama wants to enact those policies (e.g. “green jobs”) on a national scale. We can only hope that the day has passed when California served as a pointer to America’s future.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:12 AM EST

Updated: Thursday, 10 February 2011 8:27 AM EST

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One thing—though not the only thing—about Ronald Reagan that drove his left-wing political opponents absolutely bonkers was the Gipper’s imperviousness to criticism. Unlike Dick Nixon, who both loathed the Eastern Establishment and craved its approval, Reagan seemed not to give a hoot what some assistant editorial page editor at the New York Times thought of him.  No matter how harsh and withering the attack, he remained genial and smiling—a phenomenon that made such attacks seem vulgar and petty.

What his enemies failed to realize was that Ronald Reagan came to politics via the celebrity culture. The reviled him as a mere actor, but they never stopped to consider the implications of Reagan’s Hollywood background. Yet here was a man who was totally familiar with the customs and folkways of celebrity, who was quite used to reading nasty little comments about himself in the gossip columns, and who’d worked and partied with the biggest names in Tinsletown. Why, indeed, would a man like that care what some leftie nosebleed on the Harvard faculty or some know-it-all journalist thought of him?

Deep down, I suspect, Ronald Reagan’s most vicious enemies hated him not for his politics, but for his dismissive attitude toward them. His total lack of interest in what they had to say about him was received as a deadly insult. The insufferable Christopher Hitchens once sneered that when Reagan was president, he could have spent his evenings with the world’s best and brightest. But no, Hitchens griped, the dullard Reagan preferred meat loaf for dinner on a TV tray. Perhaps what really bothered him was the suspicion that Reagan would prefer meat loaf to—Christopher Hitchens.

Posted by tmg110 at 8:56 AM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 9 February 2011 8:59 AM EST

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