Category: Politics & World Affairs
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Sarah Palin made it to my corner of the woods, this Saturday afternoon. "Thousands" lined up to meet her, per the gushing report from the Washington PA Observer-Reporter (Note, the website page had been read 297 times by the time I saw it. Are there thousands of people in Washington PA, or was the true…
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What’s going on here? It’s a bittersweet human interest tale with some facts and figures mixed in, not too cloying. Blacks and whites have encountered one another in increasing numbers recently in the crowded waiting rooms of the welfare office and at the food pantry, where many of both races have ventured for the first…
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Two views on why it happened: Charles Krauthammer's "call it like it is" excoriation of political correctness. What a surprise — that someone who shouts "Allahu Akbar" (the "God is great" jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream…
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The Chinese enthusiastically await President Obama. He is by far the most popular foreign leader in China. To commemorate the visit artists have created the likeness of Obama in Chinese Red Guard uniform on t-shirts and other paraphernalia (not for sale) and a flaming Obama statue (because he is so hot).
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Since Ronald Reagan first began flirting with the religious right, the ultra conservative base of the Republican Party has become steadily more empowered. Although for both Reagan and Bush Sr. lip service to the far right wing was political expediency, nearly three decades later, the one time fringe players have become the king makers of the GOP. Paul Krugman chronicles the transformation of the wing nuts from the role…
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The American Medical Association (AMA) has just concluded its bi-annual policy conference in Houston during which the organization addressed public health policies including the cost and management of medical care in America. This year the AMA has come out in favor of health care and insurance reform. Also, it has weighed in on gay marriage and the Don't Ask, Don't…
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Potentially misleading subject adapted from the headline of this NYT article. An Orthodox Jewish high school in London is refusing to admit a Jewish student who is not, by Orthodox standards, Jewish, because he is not Jewish. Predictably, there's a court challenge. By my definition, the kid is obviously Jewish: his father is Jewish, his…
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The bill passed yesterday that Pres.Obama was ecstatic enough to personally email me about it at 1:03 am. And here I thought that only Hillary Clinton got 3 am calls.Here is the section by section summary link of the HR 3962, the Affordable Health Care For America Act All's well and good,even with a restrictive…
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Roughly equal parts of the country want gay marriage, civil unions without marriage, and no legal recognition whatsoever. I’m assuming the second category is what ‘swings’ in marriage votes as in California or Maine. Ad campaigns that cleverly use the words ‘gay’ and ‘children’ in the same sentence seem, at least for now, to be…
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A poignant war story, more than six decades old, describes the desperation and anxiety of Japanese Americans during World War II. Citizens of the US, they had to prove their loyalty to their country in those uncertain times of suspicion and hostility. Sometimes that involved acts of conspicuous courage and valor. Even 65 years later, Astro Tortolano thinks almost daily…
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Something rather strange was evident from the reports of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit last week to Pakistan. The articles suggest that her visit was not met with garlands and roses, but howls of protest and bitterness. What happened to the much-vaunted bonhomie of 'Amerika-Pakistan Bhai- Bhai"? In a nutshell, reality struck and realpolitik…
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