Voter Ignorance and the Budget
Some comments from Dispatches.
Is democracy the right thing for every country in the world? Is America the best example of this? Should we make it one of our policy goals to implement democracy in other countries? Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey doesn’t like America’s example of democracy, and he says so at length at The Mechanics of Democracy (Newsweek on…
In an article subtitled Love in a Time of Madness Newsweek (via MSNBC.com) calls our attention to the human side of the conflict in Iraq. It’s easy to become tied up with strategic goals such as how we prevent terrorism, how we can get out of Iraq and still at least feel that we accomplished…
Does that sound too alarmist? I confess I’m always trying to find ways to write headlines that attract attention and I’m not very good at it. But I’m not sure that’s too alarmist for what’s going on in Arizona right now. I spent some time in Texas when I was in the Air Force, and…
Though I have decided to support Barack Obama for president this year, one of the great negatives on my checklist for him and for the Democratic party is campaign finance laws. When I put the candidates side-by-side, however, McCain isn’t a significant improvement on that point. This is illustrated by this story on CQPolitics, informing…
A British teacher was sentenced to 15 days in prison and deportation (which should be a blessing!) for insulting Mohammed. You can read the story here. Yet this outrage is not sufficient to satisfy some Muslim hardliners. There were protests in Khartoum calling for her execution. The teacher, Gillian Gibbons, has said she doesn’t want…
I’m interested in how one can take a rather ordinary set of proposals and make them incendiary just by providing a label. And sorry, my conservative friends, I don’t buy into the “but he really is a socialist” line. The basis of the socialism charge is specific–Obama’s tax plans–and a response to that particular point…