Isn’t it true that any number of the troubled situations we find ourselves in are the result of the bad decisions we made to begin with. Our choice of a partner in marriage. Vietnam and then Iraq, from our bad decisions to go to war without good cause. Huge government deficits now threatening our children’s [...]
Archive for July 2009
The first mistakes are the hardest to undo.
July 31, 2009The Importance of Ownership
July 30, 2009Robert Fisk, the Middle East correspondent of the Independent newspaper, is not known for his support of the United States, and in particular the United States of the eight years of George Bush’s presidency. There was little, if anything that Bush did in the Middle East that didn’t arouse the scorn and often the anger [...]
Is There a ‘Right’ to Health Care?
July 29, 2009Is there a right to health care? Theodore Dalrymple says no. He questions (but doesn’t answer) where such a “right” might come from. He does say there is no basis in history for such a right. And furthermore, when the right is recognized, as in Britain, the result, in respect to the quality of the [...]
We’re much more alike than we are different.
July 28, 2009From The Wilson Quarterly, Summer 2009, Message in a Genome by Matthew Stremlau
“They said, ‘We will protect you,’” he recalled. “I said, ‘We don’t trust you.’”
July 28, 2009An article from the Times, Landowners Still in Exile From Unstable Pakistan Area. Pakistan again. As if in answer to the question, why they’re not returning, this article, From the BBC News, Pakistani policeman decapitated, “The headless body of a police constable has been found in Mingora, the main town in Pakistan’s troubled Swat Valley.” [...]
A Nation Hard to Short
July 27, 2009A New Yorker article by Nicholson Baker, A New Page, Can the Kindle really improve the book? His answer is no. He finds a number of faults, the principal one being the screen. “The problem was not that the screen was in black-and-white; if it had really been black-and-white, that would have been fine. The [...]
From France, Wine and Cheese, and Health Care?
July 11, 2009As I read daily about what is supposed to be health care reform I despair. It seems that nothing good is coming from the efforts of Congress to reform our present system. It seems rather that whatever happens is going to be more of our present costly and inefficient model, representing the powerful interests of [...]
July 4, 1776 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
July 10, 2009that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. From today’s WSJ Blogs, Washington Wire Obama Brings the Pope a Letter from Kennedy Susan Davis reports on politics. White President Barack Obama hand-delivered a letter to Pope Benedict XVI from ailing Sen. [...]
Talk to Americans like adults
July 10, 2009Today in op ed piece in the N Y Times Paul Krugman said this: “What Obama needs, in short, is to do for economic policy what he’s already done for race relations and foreign policy — talk to Americans like adults.” Could be.
Email to my sons-in-law regarding James Hansen’s latest pronouncement
July 9, 2009So how can James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, know that if we burn even half of Earth’s remaining fossil fuels we will destroy the planet? Dr. James Hansen (writing in the Huffington Post of July 9): “It looks as if the delegates from other nations may have done what [...]
