Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
The Wall Street Journal, eminent publication that it is, is misleading people with opening lines like this: Rising tensions in the Mideast cast a shadow over the start of the first direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks in nearly two years Wednesday, and leaders at the Washington summit vowed to press on with negotiations. "Rising tensions" imply …
Continue reading "In the Middle East, Tensions Really Don't Rise at Times Like This"
Detail #1 is the fact that President of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) Mahmoud Abbas doesn't have the authority with his own people to make it stick: Whether these talks succeed or collapse, this will probably be the last task for the aging Palestinian leader, also known as Abu Mazen. At 75, Abbas, chairman of …
Continue reading "On the Road to Middle East Peace, the Devil is in the Details"
Rebecca Solnit at The Nation may have unwittingly stumbled upon something in her fifth anniversary article on Katrina: Those in power, on the other hand, often run amok. They did in San Francisco in 1906, when an obsessive fear that private property would be misappropriated led to the mayor's shoot-to-kill proclamation; a massive military and …
Continue reading "Élite Panic: A Lesson From Katrina, A Lesson for Today"
It's amazing what happens when the shoe is on the other foot: Pentagon lawyers believe that online whistleblower group WikiLeaks acted illegally in disclosing thousands of classified Afghanistan war reports and other material, and federal prosecutors are exploring possible criminal charges, officials familiar with the matter said. A joint investigation by the Army and the …
Continue reading "Obama Becomes Nixon: Going After WikiLeaks"
Not in Florida, at least: Despite dumping record-breaking dollars into their maverick political campaigns, self-financed candidates Rick Scott and Jeff Greene trail their opponents heading into Tuesday's primary, according to a new Mason-Dixon poll released late Saturday. Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum now leads Scott 45-36 percent in the survey of likely Republican voters, reversing …
Continue reading "Self-Financing Isn't the Whole Deal In Elections"
I was encouraged to see the Anglican Curmudgeon's piece Keeping Religion out of Politics, and Vice Versa. You can see my immediate comments on that post, but it's heartening to finally see some movement on the "conservative" side of the debate over same sex civil marriage towards getting ride of civil marriage altogether. Earlier this …
Irrespective of what Obama's porte-parole might say: White House spokesman Bill Burton said most Americans care more about the economy and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "they are not reading a lot of news about what religion the president is." He commented on Air Force One as Obama headed for a vacation in Massachusetts …
Continue reading "There is Nothing Obvious About Barack Obama. And That Includes His Religion."
"The New Foundation" business didn't work for either Barack Obama or Jimmy Carter: Obama’s contribution was to be the New Foundation. “We must lay a new foundation for growth and prosperity–a foundation that will move us from an era of borrow and spend to one where we save and invest,” he declared. Obama would repeat …
Continue reading "New Foundations (Obama's and Otherwise) Are Expensive"
As the Anglican Curmudgeon points out: In the California case in Judge Walker's court, the principal defendants were Governor Schwarzenegger and the Attorney General, Jerry Brown. Both chose not to defend the constitutionality of the amendment, which had passed by a significant majority at the polls. (In doing so, they placed their personal views above …
Continue reading "The Standing Issue in the Proposition 8 Case Isn't a Done Deal"
When Michael Moore is doing the complaining: But if they're not laying people off yet, they're also not hiring. During the first half of 2010, GM made $2.2 billion in profit, yet according to The Wall Street Journal, they've only added 2,000 jobs in all of North America, taking their workforce from 113,000 to 115,000. …
Positive Infinity 