Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
That's the core issue of challenges to the health care law: When 21 states and several private groups initiated lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Obama health care law earlier this year, critics denounced the suits as frivolous political grandstanding. But it is increasingly clear that the plaintiffs have a serious case with a real …
Continue reading "Health Care: If It's a Tax, It Should be Called One"
This interesting tidbit, buried in an Asia Times Online piece about why Myanmar (Burma) has been a string of dictatorships and conflicts since independence: During Myanmar's period of colonial rule, from 1886 to 1948, Great Britain preferred hiring ethnic minorities to work in its colonial administration, for fear of putting the majority Burman in positions …
Continue reading "The Old British Tactic of Playing Off Minority Races Against Majority Ones"
But that's still NPR's line re the firing of Juan Williams, as elucidated at the Forum Club of the Palm Beaches: When asked about the firing of Juan Williams by NPR for comments he made on Fox News, (NPR Political Editor Ken) Rudin said he regretted the way it happened, but it was almost inevitable. …
Continue reading "NPR News and Fox Not News? You've Got to be Kidding!"
That's what they're paid to do: There was a palpable sense of disbelief in the air at Wednesday’s gathering of the Minnesota Transportation Alliance. On Tuesday, the transportation advocates saw some of their biggest boosters, including U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, chair of the House transportation committee, go down to defeat as Republicans took control of …
Continue reading "Transportation Lobbyists Better Work With the Winners"
A couple of interesting tidbits from this election cycle: first, concerning Allen West's victory over Ron Klein (congratulations are in order) in Florida's 22nd Congressional District, the Palm Beach Daily News noted the following: The West-Klein race was one of the nastiest campaigns of the season. Only the Shiny Sheet would put it this way. …
Continue reading "The Nastiest Election of the Season, and Yes, They're Smoking Something"
The late 1970's and early 1980's were an exciting time for me for this reason, but they were also a stressful time. Between the challenge of dealing with a Scots-Irish workforce (organised and otherwise) and a "culture of envy" which hadn't experienced the Reagan Era, things could get frustrating. It got to the point where …
Continue reading "The Closet Socialists are Still in the Closet"
And well they should, too: “Part of the reason that our politics seems so tough right now, and facts and science and argument does not seem to be winning the day all the time, is because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared,” he told a roomful of doctors who chipped in …
Continue reading "They're Still Talking About Obama as an Elitist Snob"
That's exactly what it is, the revenged being in this case Iraqi Premier Nuri al-Maliki: On April 24 of the same year (2003), however, he willingly surrendered to occupying US forces, four days before his 67th birthday. On Tuesday, after seven years in solitary confinement, the 74-year-old former diplomat was sentenced to death by the …
Continue reading "The Execution of Tariq Aziz: A Revenge Killing"
The last two years haven't been kind to Jim Wallis. First his man in the White House, Barack Obama, has spectacularly stumbled in his bid to reunify the country and get the economy going again (I don't think he was sincere about either, but that's another post). To use Sarah Palin's delightful phrase, that "hopey-changey …
Another "I told you so" moment. First the after-the-fact admission: Ezra Klein: The president has now told at least two journalists that "there’s no such thing as shovel-ready projects.” He obviously believes it. But what, exactly, does he mean? Jared Bernstein: The president definitely had some initial frustration that projects were taking longer to get …
Continue reading ""Shovel Ready" Was a Non-Starter From the Get-Go"
Positive Infinity 