Liberal Democrats are fond of claiming that they represent the interests of the “little guy” in society- the disadvantaged. Unfortunately, their pet proposal/initiative to raise the minimum wage on “big-box”retail strores like Wall Mart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot in Chicago means less entry level jobs, higher unemployment, and higher consumer prices- all of which harm the “working poor” the most- the very same constituencies liberal Dems claim to represent.

From today’s WSJ (subs req)

Last week the City Council voted 35-14 to impose a hyper-minimum wage on “big-box” retail stores with more than $1 billion of sales. The new law will require the likes of Wal-Mart, Target, Costco, and Home Depot to pay every worker — regardless of experience, education or skill — a minimum wage of $13 an hour by 2010 ($10 in salary and $3 in health benefits). At least another dozen cities, including Washington, D.C., are considering copy-cat laws.

Based on empirical economis evidence, such a proposal, if it goes into effect, would not be good for workers or consumers.

The only issue is how many jobs Chicago will lose. When the minimum wage rose to $8.50 an hour in 2004 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the rate of job creation fell, and workers with 12 years of education or less “suffered an extremely large and negative effect,” according to a study by the Employment Policies Institute. Wal-Mart, Target and Lowe’s Home Improvement are already threatening to stop expanding in the city if the Chicago law is enforced. They say they can’t offer “every day low prices” and pay the city’s mandatory wage hikes at the same time.

The government mandated hyper-min-wage would mean that the biggest losers would be the very “poor” the “hyper-min-wage” is intended to help.

If the law does hold up, the biggest losers will be the poor who will pay higher prices. A study by the economics firm Global Insight calculates that the presence of Wal-Mart and other low-price retailers saves working families on average more than $2,000 a year. MIT professor Jerry Hausman has found that, although Wal-Mart does slightly reduce wage rates in nearby areas, its lower prices swamp that effect. The biggest beneficiaries are families with incomes of less than $10,000 for whom “a super center makes a 30 percent difference in what they can buy.”

If liberals who constantly talk about “economic justice” really wanted to achieve economic opportunity for the poor and middle class they claim to represent they would quit advocating governmnet wage and price controls- a relic of Communist command-control economies which have been an abysmal failure every time they have been instituted, and start supporting pro-growth across-the-board supply side tax cuts on income, dividends, capital gains, and inheritance instead of constantly opposing them.

A few weeks ago on the radio program I asked our guest Ralph Peters,author of “Never Quit The Fight,” if we should be concerned with Russia given Putin’s fairly recent consolidation of power and nationalization of large sectors of the Russian economy. Ralph was not as concerned as I thoght he may be. Nevertheless, Gary Kasparov, contributing editor at The Wall Street Journal, and chairman of the United Civil Front of Russia and co-chairman of the All-Russia Civil Congress had this to say in today’s WSJ (subs req)

The Putin administration is selling off the future of Russia by the barrel. Even before an inevitable fall in energy prices bankrupts us, the epidemic levels of corruption and cronyism in our government will take their toll. A recent report from Audit Chamber Chairman Sergei Stepashin admitted there was a “loophole” that allowed Russia’s richest man, Roman Abramovich, to extract $500 million a year via the Chukotka region of which he is Mr. Putin’s appointed governor.

Kasparov then helps answer my question as to whether or not we should be concerned about Putin and Russia:

This should lead us to wonder if they really have the West’s best interests at heart when it comes to global stability. Mr. Putin has had six years to make good on his assurances to the West to help bargain with the various hostile regimes he is so close to. He promised to help with North Korea and now they have missiles capable of reaching the U.S. coast. After endless negotiations with Russia, Iran is more belligerent than ever and is hurriedly enriching uranium. The Russian foreign minister was supposedly brokering with Hezbollah and Hamas and now we have a full-scale war.

Kasparov then points out that:

A few days after the hostilities broke out, the Putin administration released its list of national and international terrorist groups — the first time the list has been made public. Strikingly, both Hamas and Hezbollah are missing. Combined with the timing of its publication, can this be seen as anything but a sign of support for the group that ignited the current conflict? Mr. Putin has demonstrated that he, too, lacks a belief in the sanctity of human life — yet he is welcomed by the West as a partner.

I hope that in Secretary Rice’s travels and meetings with Mr. Putin that she borrow an old Reagan maxim: “Trust but verify.”

John Noonan, co-founder and author of the military blog Op-For joined us last evening to talk about the situation in the Middle East. We also covered the role of Iran in this whole mess, along with their progress towards becoming a nuclear power.

You may have read about John this spring in an excellent Boston Globe article on milblogs. Just last week, John had an article published in National Review,

The Rise of the Service Gap
Academics vs. military service.

Unfortunate as it is, the service gap is becoming a reality. Not because of boogie-men scapegoats like �??the rich�?� or �??high-society,�?� but due to the efforts of a small, determined group of academics, who opt to channel their anger over past and present government policies toward young men and women whose only sin is to serve.

What is Pundit Review Radio?
Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin & Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called �??Groundbreaking�?� by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston�??s Talk Station.

Matt from the #1 milblog Blackfive joined us for our weekly collaboration to bring the inspirational, true stories of the men and women that are fighting for us around the world to the radio.

This week we learned what Col. James H. Coffman did to be awarded the distinguished service cross for his extraordinary courage and heroism during battle.

What is Pundit Review Radio?

Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin & Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called �??Groundbreaking�?� by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston�??s Talk Station.

Trolling the lefty blogs in prep for tonight’s radion show I came accross this post in the #1 Left Blog the Daily Kos. I was searching for some posts on the main issues of the day (Bolton/UN, Lebannon/Israel conflict, Bloogers and Pork, and Iraq). The vast majority of the recent posts I found were almost exclusively anti-Lieberman and anti-Bush. The blog was eerily silent with regard to the conflict in the Middle East. More on that tonight. For now consider this post with all that is going on in the world. I think you can learn a lot about contemporary liberalism and the state of the Democrat Party from this post.

It begins:

Fallujah. Signing statements. Abu Ghraib.

Waterboarding. Stress positions. Free speech zones.

The theological and historical differences between Sunni and Shi’ite. How levees are constructed. Why levees fail.

These are things I knew nothing about until George W. Bush.

And gets even more strange:

Some nights I go to sleep under this administration and wonder: What new horror am I going to have cram into my head tomorrow morning? What new form of torture? What unfamiliar town or province?

My brain’s been hijacked and my eagerness to read news killed. I know too much now compared with how much I knew in the innocent 1990’s. And there seems no way to un-know it or bleach it clean of the flavor of its original acquisition. (I still see the infamous picture of the hooded prisoner standing on the box, arms outspread at Abu Ghraib, on a background of baby blue because I first encountered the photo and the terse, stunned narrative of horror over at Billmon’s Whiskey Bar.)

And there it is. Your mainstream liberal posting on the #1 Liberal Blog the Daily Kos. Waxing eloquent about the halcyon days when Slick Willy was getting beaners in the Oval Office, fondling women his daughter’s age, and turning down the opportunity to capture and kill Osama who orchestarted that little ole thing that is commonly referred to as 9-11.

Susan G from the Daily Kos is kept awake at night not by the thought of Islamic Jihadists blowing up Boston or worrying about how are soldiers are holding up in Iraq fighting the Jihaists. No, Susan is more worried about the fact that the throat cutting savages might have to endure waterboarding or loud Christine Aguillera music.

So those of you who say: “I’m going to vote for the challenger whatever party he may belong to b/c Republicans and Democrats are fundamentally the same” I challenge you to find a post on the blogosphere from a mainline conservative blog that is this utterly deranged. Remember, Susan is a major contributor to the Daily Kos where Democratic Politicians in the Congress suck up to and write for. She is not some anomolous commenter on the blog. Her post in my opinion is a major illustration of why modern day liberal thinking poses such an immense threat to our nation.

These people have lost it entirely.

Read the entire post here.

Interesting info via Blogs4bush blog entitled “Iraqi WMD Shipments to Syria.”

Powerline brings us yet another bit of evidence that at least some of Saddam’s WMDs wound up in Syria just prior to the US-led liberation of Iraq:

This is an unofficial translation of Document Number ISGQ-2005-00022470, released as part of Project Harmony. It is a memo dated July 13, probably 2003; the author is an Iraqi opposition source located in Syria.
Subject: we have information about the location of Mass Destruction Weapons

On Moharram 10th (Arabic calendar), prior to US/allied invasion to Iraq, fifty (50) Iraqi trucks entered Syria as convoys (or groups), I met some the drivers of those trucks, they got no idea about the content of their trucks.

The loads basically came from some where in Baghdad, Iraqi intelligence were escorting the loads. During their tripe, those truck drivers were stopped and asked frequently by the intelligence officers about whether or not they got any idea about the content of their loads, the divers replied �??we have no idea,” then the officers would say �??thank you.”

Upon their arrival to Deayr Ezoor city/ Syria, the drivers were ordered to get down, elements from Syrian intelligence got into the trucks, they took the trucks to big barracks for downloading.

Entire post here.

Some very insightfull comments as well regarding the nature of chem and bio WMDs.

Those who claim that “same sex marriage” will not radically redefine society and doesn’t “hurt anybody” should consider how it already has and will continue to if the definition of marriage is able to be redefined by activist courts and not by “we the people” the only group who has Constitutional authority to decide legal issues via our elected representitives.

The Blog Know Thy Facts, Not Thy Neighbors has this from the American Family Association Journal:

For many parents in Massachusetts, California, and elsewhere in the U.S., the truth is beginning to dawn on them: They aren’t living in Kansas anymore. Public education is being used to brainwash thousands of children — even as young as kindergarten — into believing that homosexuality is simply a normal and healthy variation of human sexuality.
To be sure, when it comes to the issue of homosexuality, Massachusetts and California have been East Coast-West Coast thoroughbreds that seem to be racing each other for the honor of wackiest state in the country.
Massachusetts got off to an early lead, where activists have had nearly carte blanche since the early 1990s. Thus, at John Glenn Middle School in Bedford, for example, pink triangles adorn classroom doors, and a rainbow flag flies over the school during “gay pride” festivities. In Newton, parents discovered that first-grade teacher David Gaita had “come out” to his students and told them he was homosexual and loved men “the way your mom and dad love each other.” And in Brookline, MA lesbian eighth-grade teacher Deb Allen told National Public Radio that she explicitly teaches her students about lesbian sex, including the use of sex toys.

Is it any wonder that parents are pulling their children out of our government run public indoctrination camps (i.e. Public Schools) in record numbers or that our public schools themselves are a dismal failure?

Read the entire article here.

Pundit Review Radio
Sunday 7-10pm est
Streaming Live on WRKO

7pm EST: Week in Review; Best of the blogs
8pm: TBD
9pm: Blackfive’s Someone You Should Know and John Noonan from the Milblog Op-For

We are really looking forward to the 9pm hour tomorrow featuring Matt from Blackfive with another edition of Someone You Should Know.

Matt and Michael Yon were featured in the Wall Street Journal this week, so we will also ask him about that.

John Noonan, co-founder and author of the military blog Op-For joins us after that. You may have read about John this spring in an excellent Boston Globe article on milblogs. Just this week, John had an article published in National Review,

The Rise of the Service Gap
Academics vs. military service.

Unfortunate as it is, the service gap is becoming a reality. Not because of boogie-men scapegoats like �??the rich�?� or �??high-society,�?� but due to the efforts of a small, determined group of academics, who opt to channel their anger over past and present government policies toward young men and women whose only sin is to serve.

John is on active duty in the Air Force. He is putting his experience to good use at Op-For, where he has been all over the Israeli air campaign in Beirut. We will cover that, and a whole lot more!

What is Pundit Review Radio?

Pundit Review Radio is where the old media meets the new. Each week Kevin and Gregg give voice to the work of the most influential leaders in the new media/citizen journalist revolution. Called �??Groundbreaking�?� by Talkers Magazine, this unique show brings the best of the blogs to your radio every Sunday evening from 7-10 pm EST on AM680 WRKO, Boston�??s Talk Station.

What a great article by Peter Beinart in today’s Washington Post. The Democrats would be well served to listen to him. Here’s the intro,

After years of struggling to define their own approach to post-Sept. 11 foreign policy, Democrats seem finally to have hit on one. It’s called pandering.

and the conclusion,

The Democratic Party’s single biggest foreign policy liability is not that Americans think Democrats are soft. It is that Americans think Democrats stand for nothing, that they have no principles beyond political expedience. And given the party’s behavior over the past several months, it is not hard to understand why.

Peter Beinart will be our guest on Pundit Review Radio next Sunday, August 6th at 7pm est. We will discuss not only this article, but his new book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals — and Only Liberals — Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.

Neal Bortz answers the question.

Here is the amazing audio/video of Neal Bortz and his Muslim caller to his program.

This is amazing. A Must Listen!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HT our friend Janet Levy of Jihad Watch.

Here is a brief list of the “low lights”

Muslim outrage huh. OK �?� let�??s do a little historical review. Just some lowlights:

Muslims fly commercial airliners into buildings in New York City. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim officials block the exit where school girls are trying to escape a burning building because their faces were exposed. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims cut off the heads of three teenaged girls on their way to school in Indonesia. A Christian school. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder teachers trying to teach Muslim children in Iraq. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder over 80 tourists with car bombs outside cafes and hotels in Egypt. No Muslim outrage.
A Muslim attacks a missionary children�??s school in India. Kills six. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims slaughter hundreds of children and teachers in Beslan, Russia. Muslims shoot children in the back. No Muslim outrage.
Let�??s go way back. Muslims kidnap and kill athletes at the Munich Summer Olympics. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims fire rocket-propelled grenades into schools full of children in Israel. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder more than 50 commuters in attacks on London subways and busses. Over 700 are injured. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims massacre dozens of innocents at a Passover Seder. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims murder innocent vacationers in Bali. No Muslim outrage.
Muslim newspapers publish anti-Semitic cartoons. No Muslim outrage
Muslims are involved, on one side or the other, in almost every one of the 125+ shooting wars around the world. No Muslim outrage.
Muslims beat the charred bodies of Western civilians with their shoes, then hang them from a bridge. No Muslim outrage.
Newspapers in Denmark and Norway publish cartoons depicting Mohammed. Muslims are outraged.

Listen and watch video here.