November 1st, 2011 by John Feehery
According to the United Nations, the 7 billionth person came into the world the other day.
I was wondering why it felt kind of crowded around here.
The 1 billionth person arrived when Thomas Jefferson was president. No. 2 billion came when Calvin Coolidge was president, the 3 billionth when Dwight Eisenhower was president, the 4 billionth when Nixon was getting impeached, the 5 billionth when Reagan was in his second term, the 6 billionth when Clinton was in his second term, and now Obama is president with No. 7 billion.
If it seems like the pace is picking up, well, you are right. At this rate, we will hit 10 billion by 2050.
Most of the growth is occurring in Asia, Africa and South America. The United States and Europe are expected to stay fairly flat in their population growth, but that doesn’t mean that Europeans and Americans won’t be profoundly affected by the population explosion in other parts of the globe.
The CIA and the Defense Department planners are already thinking through the implications of this population boom. Politicians need to follow suit. Read more...
Tags: 7 billionth person, Africa, Asia, CIA, Defense Department, Europe, free-market, market capitalism, nited Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, Obama, population growth, Social Security, South America, Thomas Jefferson, Transportation infrastructure, United Nations, United States, Water security
Posted in Bad Decisions, Economy, Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, Government, History, Immigration, Politics, bad news, health care, national security, poverty, spending, taxes | No Comments »
August 4th, 2011 by John Feehery
An interesting story caught my eye in the New York Times today, about the rise of a radical right-wing group in, of all places, Sweden.
Swedes are concerned that they are losing their national character because of the high influx of immigrants from Muslim countries. The Times noted the resentments of one typical Swedish family:
“Michael Ahlgren, who lost his job as a security guard for the Red Cross just before Christmas, wears a tattoo of the Swedish flag on his shoulder and voted for the Sweden Democrats, a nationalist party that shocked the country by winning nearly a quarter of the votes for the city council here in 2006. He and his wife are outspoken in their resentment: the government spends money on refugees, they say, but their daughters’ school lunches have barely any vegetables and, to accommodate Muslim religious practice, no longer offer pork sausages.”
The lack of vegetables doesn’t seem like that much of a big concern. The pork sausages? Now, that is a reason to get mad.
This is not just Swedish problem. It has spread to the United States. Read more...
Tags: America, bacon, Chicago Public Schools, Christian, Conservatives, Economy, Government, immigrants, Iowa, Jewish, Koran, Muslim, New York Times, pig farms, pork, Red Cross, Republicans, Sweden, Torah
Posted in Economy, Food, Fun, Government, History, Humor, Politics, Religion, Theory, war | 1 Comment »
July 29th, 2011 by John Feehery
I like to call myself a Libertarian, but I am really not.
I don’t really want government to disappear. While I read The Fountainhead in college, and I admit I have found it to be influential in my life, I think Ayn Rand was a little kooky and her objectivism philosophy is unworkable in the real world.
My brother, the Tea Partier is a Libertarian. He wants government to shrink dramatically. He wants police forces to be shrunk, he wants teacher’s pensions cut, he wants most regulatory bodies eliminated. He finds government to be oppressive and he wants it to be gone.
He also believes that for the last forty-five years, America has been living a lie. He hates the military industrial complex, he hates the Federal Reserve, he wants to go back to a Gold Standard. He thinks we should never
have gone into Iraq and believes that the Soviet Union would have fallen without the Reagan buildup, and he believes that the banking system in this country is essentially corrupt.
He also finds Michele Bachmann to be appealing and he appreciates what Joe Walsh is doing in stopping the debt limit extension. Read more...
Tags: Ayn Rand, Federal Reserve, Gold Standard, Government, Internet poker, Iraq, Joe Walsh, John Boehner, Libertarian, medicare, Michele Bachmann, national defenses, Social Security, Soviet Union, taxes, Tea Party, Tea Party libertarians, The Fountainhead
Posted in Economy, Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, GOP, Government, History, Laws, Media, Politics, Promises, Theory, corruption, election, health care, medicare, national security, spending, taxes, war | 1 Comment »
October 8th, 2010 by John Feehery
I love those Dos Equis commercials, where an older, bearded Spanish guy is seen cavorting with beautiful women, conquering the most challenging challenges, doing the most fascinating things.
Here are some reasons why he is the most interesting man in the world according to a website that tracks these things:
- Police often question him, just because they find him interesting.
- His beard alone has experienced more than a lesser mans body.
- His blood smells like cologne.
- He has amassed an amazingly large DVD collection, and has never once alphabetized it.
- If he were to mail a letter without postage, it would still get there.
- The pheromones he secretes effect people miles away… in a slight, but measurable way.
- He once punched a magician. That’s right, you heard me.
He is the most interesting man in the world, according to the ad, and when he drinks beer, he drinks Dos Equis.
If the most interesting man in the world were to come to New York City, he would meet the most dangerous man in the world. And that man is Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of the Big Apple. Read more...
Tags: Americans, Dos Equis, Laws, Michael Bloomberg, New York City, NYC
Posted in Food, Government, Laws, Politics, Theory | No Comments »
September 21st, 2010 by John Feehery
I was listening to NPR’s great show, “To the Point with Warren Olney”, last night and the subject was the new poverty numbers. Olney interviewed representatives from various food banks from around the country and then interviewed policy experts from Washington D.C. to give a somewhat balanced view of what is happening in America today.
Dinora Barahona (left), of North Bend, picks out food while volunteer Denise Angrisano assists July 21 at the Mount Si Helping Hand Food Bank. (Photo by Christopher Huber)
Perhaps the most heartbreaking part of the discussion is when one of the regional representatives (this one was from Arizona) talked about how former contributors to her food bank were now customers. Nobody in middle class America wants to hear that story.
By its very nature, American society is insecure. The promise of America is that if you work hard and play by the rules, you can achieve the American dream. The peril of America is that if you have some bad breaks or if you break the rules, you could end up being a customer and not a contributor to a food bank. Read more...
Tags: american dream, Conservatives, Democrats, Drugs, Government, poor, poverty, Republicans
Posted in Economy, Education, Financial Crisis, Food, Government, Politics, Theory, spending | No Comments »
April 30th, 2010 by John Feehery
In 1893, Chicago hosted the World’s Fair, which celebrated the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. Designed by Daniel Burnham, the man who said, “Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir man’s blood,” and Frederick Olmsted, the famed landscape architect, the Chicago Columbian Exposition, sent a clear signal to the rest of the world: Watch out, because America is coming.
A century later, the United States government decided not to fund expositions any more, probably scarred by the memory of the 1984 New Orleans Expo, which is the only Expo to ever go bankrupt. Everything we do now is paid for by corporate America.
This history all came to my mind as I read the story in today’s Washington Post about the opening of the Shanghai Expo. The Chinese are taking this event very seriously, as they usually do. They get the symbolism. Read more...
Tags: china, Communism, Constitution, Corporations, democracy, Exposition, First Amendment, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hu Jintao, Shanghai, Shanghai Expo
Posted in Financial Crisis, Food, Foreign Relations, Government, Reviews | No Comments »
March 11th, 2010 by John Feehery
I always liked David Bonior. Sure, he was a left-wing, pro-labor, hard-core Democrat, who opposed much of what my personal world-view may be.
But he had integrity. He was pro-life Democrat, which takes a lot of courage. And you could tell he really cared about people.
My former boss, Speaker Denny Hastert, liked Bonior too. He was somebody in the opposition’s leadership who would always give the Speaker the straight scoop.
So, when he and his wife invited my wife and I to dinner at their new restaurant on Capitol Hill’s Barrack’s Row, I was happy to accept. Bonior is the major investor, and his son and daughter-in-law, who have long experience in the restaurant business, actually run it.
Called “Zest”, the restaurant is just about what you would expect from somebody like David Bonior. It serves good, American food at great American prices. It’s not particularly flashy, but it is very comfortable, nicely lit, with a good vibe to it.
There is a bar towards the front of the restaurant with a nice-sized big screen television, which I am fairly certain will have ESPN on it all day. Read more...
Tags: David Bonior, Denny Hastert, Jennifer Granholm, John Edwards, Restaurant, Zest
Posted in Food, Politics, Reviews | No Comments »
According to the United Nations, the 7 billionth person came into the world the other day.
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