Archive
Playing Chicken in the Capitol
The problem with the game of chicken — two people racing toward each other, each daring the other to turn aside — is that the crazy one always wins. The one who doesn’t care about head-on collisions has a stunted imagination and can’t conceive of the consequences a crash would produce.
America’s Real Job Creators are Broke
Our policymakers in Washington have totally lost sight of what’s happening at the ranch. John Boehner’s GOP-controlled House and Barack Obama’s White House have agreed to slash trillions of dollars from the federal budget, as though that’s America’s most important need. Bovine excrement! If they’d lift their vision to the countryside, even they could figure out that our great economic urgency is for the creation of good, middle-class jobs to get America moving again — moving upward and moving together.
Raised Ceiling
The Defense Industry Threatens America’s Economy
India has the military-industrial complex all figured out. So does Saudi Arabia. Neither of them has one. Who needs to build weapons when you can simply buy them at a discount elsewhere? Not that anyone really needs so many weapons anyway, but it’s still a lot cheaper to tap the competitive arms market for a few specific items than to build a massive infrastructure to keep churning out whole arsenals for yourself.
Budgeting for the Great American Train Wreck
It’s Aug. 1, 2011. Does President Barack Obama know where House votes for that last-minute budget deal are?
The Lineup: Week of Aug. 1-7, 2011
Donald Kaul underscores the GOP’s intransigence over raising the debt ceiling.
Murdoch Gets Caught Red-Handed
Rupert Murdoch, the Australian-born media tycoon, finally got his you-know-what caught in the wringer.
Heading for Havana
For most Americans, visiting Cuba is inconceivable.Not so for travelers from the rest of the world. The Caribbean country’s stunning beaches, colonial architecture, vintage cars, and vibrant musical culture attract more than 2 million tourists a year from Europe, Latin America, and elsewhere.
End the Annual Fluff Outbreaks
The news media didn’t even wait until summer had officially started this year to begin serving summer fare: fluffy and titillating stories, good for mindless beach readers and lazy reporters in vacation mode, but lacking the public-interest value we need from journalism.
Making the U.S.-Pakistan Relationship Less Toxic
Since the covert U.S. operation that killed Osama bin Laden near a Pakistani military installation, the U.S.-Pakistani relationship has rapidly deteriorated. Officials from both countries face increasing political pressure to stand firm in opposition to one another. However, this diplomatic confrontation won’t produce any winners. Undermining U.S.-Pakistani bilateral relations could have drastic implications for the security of the entire South Asian region.
