Two months to the Ceremony: Its not too late to earn that Peace Prize

As far as I can tell, no one has actually accepted the Nobel Peace Prize while they were prosecuting a war, much less two.  Lê Ðức Thọ was offered one while involved in the invasion of / civil war with South Vietnam, but refused to accept the award.
I see three logical possibilities for this year’s [...]

Health Care Solutions: The Free Lunch is over here, what are you eating?

After a few months of reading about this bizarre health care debate, I think I finally understand things well enough to put my thoughts on record.  (Was the wait against the spirit of blogging? I probably should have written a ill-informed post to respond to each twist, turn and dumb remark)
First, I should say that [...]

Do Sanctions Strengthen Oppressive Regimes?

Lots of anecdotal evidence suggests that the Castros, at least, believe they do.

A small step toward a much better world

The website Wikileaks is currently down.  They recently broke the story of the list of websites banned by the Australian government, and their bandwidth has been overloaded by peoples’ interest.
Wikileaks allows little people to get information indicting powerful organizations in to the view of the larger world.  They protect the anonymity of their sources, and [...]

Nuclear Nazi Assassin: Making Maine look good

My native Maine seems to produce about a story a year featuring backwoods types who do really messed up things, but this story blows away all the others.
Apparently a wannabe-Nazi living in Belfast was building a dirty bomb to set off at the Presidential Inauguration, but was murdered by a vigilante (his wife?).
The only thing [...]

Brzezinski’s Second Chance

Being an author can be a very cushy job once you’ve got a good reputation and money for research assistants.
Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Second Chance examines how three post-Cold War American Presidents handled America’s role as the world’s only superpower.  Brzezinski’s own policy prescriptions in the book are mostly vague and general; when they are specific they [...]

Democracy is Cool once more

After the American Revolution, democracy was the new thing that all the cool Americans were doing.
In the 1960’s and 70’s, a large youth cohort and a constitutional amendment lowering the voting age brought down the age of the median political participant.  Political policies and styles became more in tune with the youngest generation which is [...]

More links

1. Darwin- very gradual change we can believe in.
2. Political Truth in Advertising- What would Obama and McCain look like if they wore NASCAR-style uniforms celecrating their sponsors?  Something like this.
3.  When companies mock their own customers.  Brilliant, though Hipsters do get it a lot.
4.  On Role Models and Their Bongs. A little late to [...]

Self-Defeating Political Regimes: The Case of Inequality

We can all think of specific times when a political party has shot themselves and their base in the foot.  In fact, the last eight years may have been one of these times.
If we believe what most say, that power corrupts, then any party long in power will get old and corrupt.  There is no [...]

Conspiracy Theory In the Making

Dec 8: Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich has all state agencies suspend business with Bank of America, in retaliation for their decision to withdraw financing from a distressed local manufacturer.
Dec 9: Blagojevich is arrested on federal corruption charges, for “attempting to sell appointment to a U.S. Senate seat”.
Need more proof than this that the banks secretly [...]