The conventional wisdom seems to be that Vietnam was a bad war because we lost. Pity, because the tragedy is that there was nothing there to win. It is a distinction that I fear has been lost among our political leadership on both sides of the aisle. It’s easy to imagine war as capture the [...]
Archive for July, 2009
Declaring Victory
Posted in John McCain, Military, Obama, War on Terror, Weapons of Mass Destruction on July 31, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Details
Posted in Health Care, Nancy Pelosi, Obama on July 30, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
There is something about a large federal program that makes it impossible for every stakeholder to resist trying to bury a clause or two for his own enrichment. Probably the money. I realize this isn’t new. Railroad construction was a scam of epic proportions in a growing nation, not because of the profitability of the [...]
Waterloo
Posted in Foreigners, Health Care, Military, Obama on July 29, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Jim DeMint believes health care will be the President’s Waterloo: He may be right…but I’m not sure Waterloo is the metaphor he thinks it is.
Unconscionable Math
Posted in Corruption, Health Care, Labor Policy, Meltdown, Movies on July 28, 2009 | 187 Comments »
The House hearings on rescission – the retroactive cancellation of individual health insurance policies – were over a month ago, but after its initial run through Daily Kos it seems to have waited a bit before popping up on Baseline and Slate. James Kwak at Baseline described the practice as rare, affecting only 0.5% of [...]
Food
Posted in Energy Policy, Food, Health Care on July 27, 2009 | 5 Comments »
This weekend the Remote Area Medical Group – a variant of Medecins Sans Frontieres – had its annual field event at the Wise County Fair Ground. In Virginia, not Zimbabwe. It is disgraceful that in the United States, which our politicians insist on telling us is the best at everything, people need to drive hundreds [...]
Inequality
Posted in Foreigners, Labor Policy, Miscellaneous on July 26, 2009 | 3 Comments »
James Kwak takes on Will Wilkinson, who has a critique of Paul Krugman‘s articles about income inequality. I’m not sure I agree with any of them. The third grade version of the debate so far: Paul says that when he grew up in the 1950s, everything was perfect. We lived in cookie-cutter suburbs, drove one [...]
Bad Math, Worse Investors
Posted in Corruption, Meltdown, Tim Geithner on July 25, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Goldman Sachs reached agreement with the Treasury to buy back Treasury’s TARP warrants. As the press release makes clear: In June, Goldman Sachs repaid the U.S. Treasury’s investment of $10 billion, and during the eight months of the investment, the firm paid $318 million in preferred dividends. We are pleased that the payment of the [...]
Fancy Fast Food
Posted in Food, Housing Policy on July 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Thank you Freakanomics, for showing me a website dedicated to rearranging fast food items. Yes, this really is a Big Mac, fries, and Coke:
Bravo
Posted in Health Care, Hillary Clinton, Labor Policy, Obama on July 23, 2009 | 4 Comments »
During the campaign, one of the rare moments of principle of any candidate was Obama’s refusal to take Hillary’s bait and endorse a gas tax holiday. It was the time I stopped seeing him as Candidate Barack Obama and started seeing him as President Barack Obama. Although I have disagreed with some of the decisions [...]
Control of the Narrative
Posted in Housing Crisis, Housing Policy, Meltdown on July 22, 2009 | 4 Comments »
On July 3, 1863, the Army of Northern Virginia was defeated at Gettysburg by the Army of the Potomac. As was fitting for a conflict in which each side simultaneously advocated the right of the minority to be free from the majority and the majority’s right to dominate the minority, the South attacked from the [...]
