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For years, budget hawks warned about the damaging effects of the mushrooming national debt, which now totals more than $33 trillion. But they had to speculate about how a debt crisis would materialize because it was only theoretical. We’re now beginning to see the real-life effects of an unsustainable federal debt load. To finance trillions of dollars in spending beyond what incoming revenue can support, the US Treasury is now issuing more debt in the form of Treasury securities than global financial markets can readily absorb. That forces the borrower — the US government — to pay higher interest rates,...

Sometimes it takes an everyday chore for someone spoiled to realize they have it pretty good. Like, say, using a broom.

Here's what I was told during my freshman orientation at Haverford College: Ask for help when you need it. Speak up when you feel uncomfortable. Place your own well being above all other concerns. In short, the school was ready to protect me from any personal slights or hurt feelings I might suffer. What counted as a personal slight or similar offense was up to me to define. This surprised me. It surprised me because at McDonald's, where I worked before I started school, acting in this way would have probably cost me my job, a job I needed in...

During Customs week, in PAF sessions, and in everyday discourse here at Haverford, we are taught to ask for help when we feel we need it, speak up when we feel uncomfortable, and prioritize our own well being over most other things. At McDonald's, acting in this way could have cost me my job, a job I needed to afford college... Those of us who need to work in order to support ourselves and pay tuition cannot afford to internalize the soft, self-centered mindset presented by our peers and customs folk at Haverford -- had I gone to a manager...

Wanted to share something with everyone here....not necessarily so much schadenfreude as it is educational and entertaining to see the lights come on for an Obama supporter. Simply put, a liberal pseudo-intellectual colleague has decided to start a small business....very small. Only himself working out of his home. He apparently wants to use his skills and talents to create wares in his own home and do business over the 'net. He is the only employee.... But lo and behold, hardly a week goes by when this young man, who looked admiringly at BO and called him "a genius", now bemoans...

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Reality star Joey Kovar, who appeared on "The Real World: Hollywood" and "Celebrity Rehab," was found dead at a friend's home near Chicago on Friday (Aug. 17) morning, reports TMZ.

Politics: A week ago, as the secretary of labor greeted grim job data by hailing the economy's "turnaround," the Dow fell 100 points in seconds — a vivid sign America is wising up to this administration's incompetence. Only minutes after her department reported that payrolls had shed another 131,000 positions in July, there was Secretary Hilda Solis speaking brazenly of the "strong and immediate action" the White House had taken to save or create "more than 2.5 million American jobs." But as the market action showed, investors could see she didn't know what she was talking about. But then, Solis...

Gov. Jerry Brown is expected in coming days to sign a bill requiring that 33 percent of the state’s electricity come from renewable sources by 2020, much more than the present requirement of 20 percent. This is by far the most ambitious plan of any state, spurred by a determination to reduce the emissions that contribute to global warming and to stop sending billions of dollars each year to oil-producing nations with troubling agendas. But on two fronts, there is a quality of make-believe to the legislation. For starters, given the extent of opposition to renewable-energy projects, California was going...

A lot of people in government don't know much about business operations because they have never run a business. Examples: the current president, vice president, probably most members of Congress, economics professors at publicly funded state colleges, and most of the other people in government or government-funded organizations for whom I slave away as an independent businessman on a daily basis to pay their salary and benefits. In the interest of giving these people a sliver of insight into real-world working conditions, I thought I'd present a glimpse into my thought processes on Social Security tax reduction of 2 percent...

TRWS: TGS and TSS – The various real and virtual elements of TGS and TSS are based upon the doctrine of Game Theory which relates that gaming can be, and in some cases should be, training for various Real World Capabilities. Therefore TGS and TSS are components of the Transferable Real World Skills Game Theory doctrine. TRWS (and the various components which comprise the Doctrine) is a Virtual Training and Gaming Protocol designed to allow the development, practice, and transmission of Real World Skills into a Training Scenario or Gaming Environment. Likewise the practice of Gaming and Virtual skills in...

On the radio a couple of weeks ago, Hugh Hewitt suggested to me the terrorists might try to pull a Spain on the U.S. elections. You'll recall (though evidently many Americans don't) that in 2004 hundreds of commuters were slaughtered in multiple train bombings in Madrid. The Spaniards responded with a huge street demonstration of supposed solidarity with the dead, all teary passivity and signs saying "Basta!" -- "Enough!" By which they meant not "enough!" of these murderers but "enough!" of the government of Prime Minister Aznar, and of Bush and Blair, and troops in Iraq. A couple of days...

I should seriously write a book called, The Idiots Guide To Not Thinking Seriously About Islam. It’s hard to find a subject where mushy thinking is more in vogue – where political correctness conquers reality more thoroughly. People actually are afraid to think seriously on the subject, because the logical conclusions are too frightening for many to contemplate. And so, there’s no place where comfortable clichés are more readily deployed. Probably the most glaring illustration of inanity here were recent comments by his Holiness, the Dalai Lama. On leaving a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI, the leader of Tibetan Buddhists...

Evacuees Trying to Piece Lives Together To hurricane survivors Richard Allen and Sandra Montegut, their recent arrival together at Camp Couchdale has been just another, albeit more comfortable, chapter in the struggle to gather the scattered jigsaw pieces of their lives in the wake of Katrina. The pair, fellow residents of New Orleans' eastern district, finally landed at Camp Couchdale following a three-day bus ride. The neighbors spent a week in the horrifying post-storm conditions of the Superdome, sleeping in shifts and defending one another from the criminal element that quickly surfaced there. "There was so much lawlessness," Montegut stated,...

We liberals from time to time say we would endorse, without a tremor, the military option if convinced that the individual agency being targeted was "GUILTY." Hence the hand-wringing over "proof" of WMDs. This is like asking a cop to make sure the perpetrator he arrests is "GUILTY" before taking him into custody. What constrains a cop in his investigation of a crime should no less constrain a democracy similarly charged to protect its people. In short and in police parlance, following the mass murder of 9/11, the United States had "reasonable suspicion" to target not only Afghanistan but Iraq...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

If anyone's needs reminding about the intent and character of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) towards the United States, one only take a look at this photo, taken at a North Korean pre-school in the capital city of Pyongyang, just yesterday.

Stressed for Success?By DAVID BROOKSPublished: March 30, 2004Many of you high school seniors are in a panic at this time of year, coping with your college acceptance or rejection letters. Since the admissions process has gone totally insane, it's worth reminding yourself that this is not a particularly important moment in your life. You are being judged according to criteria that you would never use to judge another person and which will never again be applied to you once you leave higher ed. For example, colleges are taking a hard look at your SAT scores. But if at any moment...

March 18, 2004 | PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Real-world labor issues apparently were too much for the producers of a popular MTV reality show. Bunim/Murray Productions said Tuesday it had given up plans to tape the 15th season of "The Real World" in Philadelphia. Taping had been set to begin in three weeks. The production company had angered labor unions by hiring a nonunion company to renovate the former Seamen's Church Institute in Old City, where it planned to have seven strangers live together and have their lives videotaped. Members of the building trades unions picketed outside the building. A Bunim/Murray...

After squabbling with local unions, the producers of the MTV series today gave up on Philadelphia as the site of its 15th season. Taping was to begin in three weeks. "After considerable evaluation, we are disappointed to announce that Bunim/Murray Productions has decided not to shoot The Real World in Philadelphia," a spokeswoman for the company said this afternoon. She declined to elaborate.