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Happily, you need not invest the next few weeks of your life reading the 1,990-page House overhaul of the health-insurance — and by implication, the healthcare — industry. A convenient summary has been provided, compliments of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, [...]
Filed under: Satire
If we had it to do over, would we send an army into Afghanistan to build a nation? Would we invade Iraq? While these two wars have cost 5,200 dead, a trillion dollars and a divided America facing an endless war, what have we won? Gen. Stanley McChrystal needs 40,000 to 80,000 more troops, or [...]
Here in the Upper Midwest its Packers-Vikings week so pretty much everyone is gearing up for the big NFL game Sunday in Green Bay’s Lambeau Field. Minnesota is 7-1 and Green Bay is 4-2 and Brett Favre is making his first trip back to Green Bay since 2008. You can see how this affects football [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
I was pretty positive about J Street when it launched 18 months ago. And of course, on balance I prefer J Street to the bellicose AIPAC. The former does not advocate that America launch wars (Iraq) that are not in its interest to fight. But J Street’s premises may be flawed. This “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, Politics, World
I agree with some of the points Phil Giraldi makes here, (and have been receiving some mail today on the question of what are the American interests in the whole deal). But I think J Street is a big and dynamic enough phenomenon that it could well burst whatever boundaries its most conservative backers [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
This curious nugget from today’s Washington Post: President Obama has asked senior officials for a province-by-province analysis of Afghanistan to determine which regions are being managed effectively by local leaders and which require international help, information that his advisers say will guide his decision on how many additional U.S. troops to send to the battle. [...]
Filed under: War
I’ve spent the last two days at the first J Street Conference, an exciting and historic event. For those who don’t know, J Street is the new “pro_Israel, pro-peace” lobby formed by a younger group of American Jews, supportive of a two state solution, and willing to grapple with the idea that Israel has done [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
The literary journal is dead, long live the literary journal. Here’s a fairly hearty plug in the New York Times today for something called Electric Literature, a desperately trendy new journal aimed at hipster intellos. It is marketed solely for the e-readers — Kindle owners and so on — and endeavors to pay authors handsomely [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized
The NYT’s story about how the CIA has had Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brother Ahmed Wali on the payroll for much of the past eight years is intended to shock because Ahmed Wali has frequently been linked to drug trafficking. Well, he is also linked to his brother, which is why he is important. As [...]
Filed under: Foreign policy, War
Barack Obama’s disapproval rating has been notching upward during the summer and fall, to the point where about 44 percent of Americans polled now have an unfavorable opinion of his performance. Republicans have rejoiced, but there’s bad news for them, too — the GOP’s favorability rating is now a 25-year-low 36 percent, according to CNN/Opinion [...]
Filed under: Politics