America needs a man of action

Here's an item from Thomas Sowell

Detroit News via Boortz

"If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.

What the media call Gingrich's "baggage" concerns largely his personal life and the fact that he made a lot of money running a consulting firm after he left Congress. This kind of stuff makes lots of talking points that we will no doubt hear, again and again, over the next weeks and months.

But how much weight should we give to this stuff when we are talking about the future of a nation?"

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Convention Wisdom

This essay from Steven Malanga

City Journal

For two decades, American cities have used public dollars to build convention center space—far more than demand warranted. The result has been a gigantic nationwide surplus of empty meeting facilities, struggling convention centers, and vacant hotel rooms (see “The Convention Center Shell Game,” Spring 2004). Given the glut, you’d think that cities would stop. Instead, many are spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand convention centers and open yet more dazzling hotels, arguing that whatever convention business remains will flow to the places with the fanciest amenities. If this dubious rationale proves wrong and the facilities fail—it’s telling that the private sector won’t build them on its own—taxpayers will wind up on the hook, as usual.

Indiana Ice

I recently attended an Indiana Ice hockey game. This was the first live game that my kids had seen and I was pleasantly surprised. As I was raised in Detroit, I caught the hockey bug early in life.

I have not lived in the Detroit area for many years and do not get to attend my beloved Detroit Red Wings games except on rare visits with the family.

After attending the Ice game I find that I am growing to become a fan of the local team. It was a fun game, very competitive, and family-priced. We are planning our next game.

UPDATE: Here are a couple of pix from the game.

Atlas Shrugged Movie Trailer

The trailer has finally been released for this movie. Due to open on April 15th.



For more information - check out the Atlas Shrugged Movie website

Chrysler Eminem Super Bowl Commercial - Imported From Detroit

Like many of my fellow Detroiters, I thought this was a great commercial. I think it sums up the feelings that many natives have about the knocks that the city has taken for so many years. Yes, some of the criticism may have been deserved but the city is steeped in history that should not be ignored.
Thanks to Chrysler and the firm that put this commercial on air. With all that Detroit has had to weather for so long, I think we needed it.

‘Mini-Revolt’ Confronts Republicans as They Ready Cuts

Business Week

As House Republicans parry Democratic criticism that they’ve gone too far with proposed spending cuts, they confront a battle within their own ranks over whether the cuts go far enough.

A faction of House Republicans plans to continue pushing for bigger budget savings than party leaders recommended last week, reductions that Democrats argue would harm the U.S. economic recovery.

Republicans won control of the House in November on promises to slash government spending by $100 billion this year. Leaders backed off that pledge, offering a plan they will take up next week that trims 2011 spending by $35 billion, in part because the fiscal year already is almost half over. The cuts are $58 billion less than President Barack Obama requested for non-security discretionary spending

The Survival Of Dumb Ideas

From the Cato Institute blog

On the National Interest‘s Skeptics blog, I discuss Steve Walt article in the latest Foreign Policy magazine: “Where Do Bad Ideas Come From?” Walt explains why discredited ideas about foreign policy survive despite all the study and debate we give to them in this country. He is really talking about failure in what John Stuart Mill calls the “marketplace of ideas“—the tendency of free speech to bring debate that promotes good ideas and demotes bad ones, driving public policy toward improvement.