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30 Dec 09
It’s the End of 2009. Where Are Our Troops?
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Speaking of Iraq in February 2008, candidate Barack Obama said, “I opposed this war in 2002. I will bring this war to an end in 2009. It is time to bring our troops home.” The following month, under fire from Hillary Clinton, he reiterated, ”I was opposed to this war in 2002….I have been against it in 2002, 2003, 2004, 5, 6, 7, 8 and I will bring this war to an end in 2009. So don’t be confused.”
22 Dec 09
Medical tourism: '5-star' care at a discount
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Critics of health care reform often point to desperate Canadians who head south for surgery to escape waiting lists. But a bigger trend points in the opposite direction: Americans heading overseas to escape the exorbitant cost of U.S. care.
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U.S. doctors refused to give him a price. "They would almost be proud of it," Freeman said. "They would say, 'That's not my department, I do operations. I don't have any idea how much anything costs.' Even the nurse would get mad at me and say, 'You want me to connect you with the billing department?' "
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The States’ Failed Experiments: The major provisions of ObamaCare have already been tried. And they don’t look good
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Like participants in a
national science fair, state governments have tested variants on
most of the major health care reforms Congress is considering. The
results include dramatically higher premiums in the individual
market, spiraling public costs, and reduced access to care. -
Despite these state-level failures, President Barack Obama and
congressional Democrats are pushing a slate of similar reforms.
Unlike most high school science fair participants, they seem
unaware that the point of doing experiments is to identify what
actually works. Instead, they’ve identified what doesn’t—and
decided to do it again.
21 Dec 09
The Case Against Iran Sanctions
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economic sanctions rarely achieve their stated goals and almost always
harm innocent people. -
When governments impose sanctions on people in another country, the main goal
of the officials who favor the policy is to harm the person or people in charge
of that country’s government so that they will change their policies. That’s
the goal. What they do to achieve it is intentionally harm many innocent
people in those countries, in this case by trying to reduce their supply of
gasoline. - 2 more annotations...
U.S. prison population headed for first decline in decades
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The inmate population has risen steadily since the early 1970s as states adopted get-tough policies that sent more people to prison and kept them there longer. But tight budgets now have states rethinking these policies and the costs that come with them.
17 Dec 09
U.S. National Debt Tops Debt Limit
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The ceiling was set at $12.104 trillion dollars. The latest posting by Treasury shows the National Debt at nearly $12.135 trillion.
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The Debt Limit has been raised about a hundred times since 1940, when it was $49 billion - about five days worth of federal spending now.
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Beyond Pleasantville: Permissiveness wasn't born in the '60s
Jesse Walker reviews <em>The Permissive Society: America, 1941-1965</em>, by Alan Petigny.
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The Truman and Eisenhower eras, he writes, were
marked by “an unprecedented challenge to traditional moral
restraints.” Petigny isn’t referring to a bohemian subculture or to
rock ’n’ roll rebellion: There are only a few scattered references
to beatniks in this book, and its discussion of pop music devotes
more space to Pat Boone than to Elvis Presley. Petigny is talking
about the great American middle, whose values in areas ranging from
child rearing to religious piety underwent a rapid and radical
change long before the love-ins. -
At one point
Petigny argues that the rise of the disease model of addiction
reflected the rise of permissiveness, since the perspective’s
proponents “viewed the self as essentially innocent, the victim of
a disease process beyond its own control and causation.” But the
idea also suggests a loss of personal responsibility, and a
government’s right to forcibly liberate its subjects from the
habits that enslave them.
No Firm Plans for a U.S. Exit in Afghanistan
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The Obama administration sent a forceful public message Sunday that American military forces could remain in Afghanistan for a long time, seeking to blunt criticism that President Obama had sent the wrong signal in his war-strategy speech last week by projecting July 2011 as the start of a withdrawal.
Why I Prefer French Health Care
Matt Welch compares his health care experiences in France and in the United States.
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In the U.S. you
have to fight to get on the appointment schedule of a doctor
within your health insurance network (I’ll conservatively put the
average wait time at five days), then have him or her scrawl
something unintelligible on a slip of paper, which you take to a
drugstore to exchange for your medicine. You might pay the doc
$40, but then his office sends you a separate bill for the visit,
and for an examination, and those bills also go to your insurance
company, which sends you an adjustment sheet weeks after the
doctor’s office has sent its third payment notice. By the time
it’s all sorted out, you’ve probably paid a few hundred dollars
to three different entities, without having a clue about how or
why any of the prices were set.
In France, by contrast, you walk to the corner pharmacist, get
either a prescription or over-the-counter medication right away,
shell out a dozen or so euros, and you’re done. If you need a
doctor, it’s not hard to get an appointment within a day or
three, you make payments for everything (including X-rays) on the
spot, and the amounts are routinely less than the co-payments for
U.S. doctor visits. -
But as long as
the U.S. remains this ungainly public-private hybrid, with
ever-tighter mandates producing ever-fewer consumer choices, the
average consumer’s health care experience will probably be more
pleasing in France. - 1 more annotations...
07 Dec 09
Diplomacy That Will Live in Infamy
I don't know that Japan would not have attacked Pearl Harbor had Theodore Roosevelt not encouraged their imperial ambitions, but he certainly didn't help.
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But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?
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In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt approved the Japanese annexation of Korea and agreed to an “understanding or alliance” among Japan, the United States and Britain “as if the United States were under treaty obligations.” The “as if” was key: Congress was much less interested in North Asia than Roosevelt was, so he came to his agreement with Japan in secret, an unconstitutional act.
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A Little More Mystic Nationalism
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The value of liberal rights and a liberal order are clear enough that free people do not need more than a dram of nationalist fortification to rise to liberty’s defense. Liberty is best loved when it is loved because it is good — because it makes possible a rightful order. Liberty is neglected when it is loved merely because it’s what we, the folks in these parts, happen to tell each other we love. An ongoing culture of liberty certainly makes us readier to grasp liberty’s real worth. But a culture in which the love of freedom is too easily confused with an admiration of martial virtue is a culture likely to find itself sooner or later at war with some imagined enemy and its own liberal values.
04 Dec 09
What does Obama's Afghan timeline mean? Depends who's asking
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The Obama administration is giving different explanations of its July 2011 deadline for the start of an Afghanistan troop withdrawal, assuring foreign officials that it applies only to the 30,000 to 35,000 additional U.S. troops that President Barack Obama is sending next year, but suggesting to Congress that it covers all U.S. forces.
25 Nov 09
Skeptics doubt Mexican data on military abuses: Figures contradict U.S. numbers; complaints rise as drug war rages
Figures contradict U.S. numbers; complaints rise as drug war rages
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The Mexican military has come under scrutiny because of a surge in complaints against soldiers, including allegations of torture, beatings and illegal raids and arrests. The Mexican army is leading the fight against the powerful drug cartels as part of President Felipe Calderón's U.S.-backed strategy to put 45,000 troops into the streets and employ soldiers as police.
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Human rights monitors in Mexico and the United States describe the handful of convictions as proof that Mexico's military is incapable of prosecuting abuses among its officers and troops. The army pursues cases before secretive tribunals and refuses to release basic information, such as the names of the accused.
22 Nov 09
The Decline: The Geography of a Recession
A dynamic map of the United States, depicting unemployment by county from January 2007 through September 2009.
16 Nov 09
U.S. is doing no good in Afghanistan
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In 2001, the U.S. helped return to power the worst misogynist criminals, such as the Northern Alliance warlords and druglords. These men ought to be considered a photocopy of the Taliban. The only difference is that the Northern Alliance warlords wear suits and ties and cover their faces with the mask of democracy while they occupy government positions. But they are responsible for much of the disaster today in Afghanistan, thanks to the U.S. support they enjoy.
12 Nov 09
We Don't Do Backlashes: Violent religious extremists are a tiny minority, but so are violent racists
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as long as the press is busting myths related
to Islam and terrorism, perhaps it is time to revisit the deeply
entrenched idea that America experienced a post-9/11 backlash
against Muslim-Americans—and will likely experience a new wave of
Islamophobia. -
A 2002 investigation by The
Washington Post found there to be "little proof of [a]
post-9/11 backlash" against Muslims. And while the FBI reported a
large increase in hate crimes against Arab and Muslim-Americans,
the number of incidents were still microscopically small, the
offenses often vague (most falling under the category of
"intimidation") and rarely violent, and still significantly lower
than those classified as anti-Semitic. - 1 more annotations...
09 Nov 09
When Asked Where the Constitution Authorizes Congress to Order Americans To Buy Health Insurance, Pelosi Says: 'Are You Serious?'
I think the lesson here is that even written constitutions are not much of an obstacle to governments doing whatever they want.
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Pelosi then shook her head before taking a question from another reporter. Her press spokesman, Nadeam Elshami, then told CNSNews.com that asking the speaker of the House where the Constitution authorized Congress to mandated that individual Americans buy health insurance as not a "serious question."
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Elshami responded by sending CNSNews.com a Sept. 16 press release from the Speaker’s office entitled, “Health Insurance Reform, Daily Mythbuster: ‘Constitutionality of Health Insurance Reform.’” The press release states that Congress has “broad power to regulate activities that have an effect on interstate commerce. Congress has used this authority to regulate many aspects of American life, from labor relations to education to health care to agricultural production.”
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