I wonder how much of the “red state/blue state” divide is based not on “politics” per se, but on misunderstanding of culture, so that the two groups use words to mean different things.
I’ll start with a quote from President Obama at the recent prayer breakfast, taken from an article by Ruth Marcus in the Washington […]

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Protesters fed up with political repression, corruption and poverty have toppled the government of Tunisia. They threaten to do the same in other countries throughout the Middle East as pundits hail the “Twitter and Facebook revolution”. But repressive governments have as much compunction about shutting down communication services as they do about torturing dissidents. Egypt […]

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Despite the fact that the shooting in Arizona was caused by a mentally ill person, the spin was followed by a week of Sarah Palin bashing.
With the State of the Union address, it’s calmed down a bit, but nevertheless Time Magazine decided it was important news to complain that Sarah Palin put the flag on […]

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In my last essay, I argued that a lot of false assumptions have been made about the political shooting in Tucson, yet several attributing factors have been ignored, including the inability of the public and of public officials to recognize severe mental illness. 
An entertainment culture that glorifies and justifies deviant behavior and violent acts is […]

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The “meme” in much of the press is blaming right wing political talk for the tragedy in Tucson. Well, this is not new: I remember a similar paranoia against the right after JFK was killed in Dallas, never mind that his killer was a communist who had earlier tried to kill General Walker, a real […]

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Their group was “liberal in wanting to change the way the world was run, we both wanted to. He took it to an extreme I never would’ve.” She said he was a “political radical” long before the teaparty, Glenn Beck, or Sarah Palin came on the scene.
Caitie also said he was a pot head and was into the music of Hendrix, The Doors, and Anti-Flag. “We listened to political punk in high school & agreed with their leftist opinions for the most part. Anti-Flag was our band.”

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Over here in the Philippines, we have a lot of political murders, and entering politics can be risky. The dirty little secret is that most of these are against low level politicians, and they are not really about disagreeing with a person’s politics, but about who will control all that lovely money that is funneled […]

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The President just authorized a regulation to pay doctors to discuss end of life counseling during your yearly physical.
Well, good. I doubt any doc can do a true “in depth” discussion of end of life issues at the end of a 45 minute yearly physical, but since I’ve rarely been paid for the many long […]

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Update: America.gov restored Ted Lipien’s comment.
TedLipien.com, Truckee, California, December 27, 2010 — On the day the U.S. Senate voted to approve the new arms reduction treaty with Russia, I found an article on the State Depatment’s website, America.gov, which gave a long list of the START treaty’s benefits lauded by the Obama administration but […]

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In Asia, marriage is about family, not the “nuclear” family but the extended family that cares for all it’s members. No social welfare in the good old days: The sick, the pregnant, the small children and the elderly were cared for by family members.
In America, the culture is insisting that marriage is about “ME ME […]

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Ordering the US military to enlist openly homosexual men and women is being pushed as a civil rights matter, with everyone quietly ignoring the “elephant in the living room”: sexual activity.
A similar “elephant” was ignored when women were integrated with their male colleagues in the military. Yes, there was a fairly high pregnancy rate, but […]

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Never mind that many of the worst politicians continue to refuse to listen to us and attempt to twist our words into their own sick meaning. I doubt many of those offenders were honestly “elected.” They were more likely put into office through the fraudulent handiwork of Acorn, SEIU and the like; if that weren’t so, they would have been a little less cocky over the last two years and a little more concerned about what their constituents thought. But now that we have woken up and are watching them, they won’t be able to continue their game forever.

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As an Asian, I am aghast that Thomas Friedman is picking up the propaganda line coming out of China and disseminating it on the New York Times editorial page.
From today’s editorial:
What if China had a WikiLeaker and we could see what its embassy in Washington was reporting about America?
Reality check:
China would jail anyone who even […]

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Years ago, when the “right wing militia” were being made into the “enemy” by the press, some local good old boys drinking at a bar began talking against the government. This was common at the time, but in this case, a visitor played on them to entice them into a scheme to bomb a local […]

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Ho humdrum. It’s back to political bidness in the Empire State. The gubernatorial race ended just as predicted. Andrew Cuomo finally got elected to something. (Becoming attorney general on Eliot Spitzer’s coat tails doesn’t count.) Not that beating Carl Paladino is proof of public appeal. A friend of mine in Hudson County, New Jersey suggested […]

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By Jefferson Flanders
Here are five lessons from the 2010 midterm elections to consider.
1. While the “Hope and Change” brand has been weakened, don’t assume that Barack Hussein Obama can’t recover his “mojo” in time for the 2012 presidential campaign.
The results of the midterm elections can be seen as the low point for Obama’s presidency—along with […]

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If we stay on the same course, budget-wise, in just 5 years the interest on our national debt will approach what we spend to defend the country.  This must be dealt with.
Yesterday, a White House commission put together by President Obama released a draft proposal to do just that.
The leaders of a White House commission […]

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Before the diuretics (especially the loop diuretics) became available in the late 1960’s, if a person had fluid retention from kidney or heart problems, we treated them with a very low salt diet. If they developed too much fluid retention (what in the good old days was called “dropsy”) we would hospitalize them, put them […]

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Traditional party labels have gone out of the window. We live in a world of ever increasing government size, and increasing debt levels. Democrats blame the current economic problem on the legacy left by the Republicans. Republicans claim that it is not so! Who is right? I for one have no idea.
I can however see […]

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One of my friends on facebook always posts an “ain’t it awful” post from the leftwing blogosphere. Usually it’s about some unknown preacher who said some ridiculous thing, and it is in for her and her friends to use this to bash all Christians, even those of us on the liberal side of Christianity. I […]

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The headline sounds ominous.

American Medical News More evidence for why health system reform happened: a House study found a rapidly rising rate of denials for individual coverage.
amednews: Coverage denials by 4 […]

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With Health Care being paid for by taxpayers now, one needs to expect more “avoid getting screened” propaganda (and save taxpayer money).
The “big money” screening programs are about prostate cancer and breast cancer.
In breast cancer, mammograms allow one to pick up small lesions (that of a small pearl versus that of  those found on exams: […]

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A lot of nonsense being written about Afghanistan: Some see it as a hopeless war, but the dirty little secret is that Afghanistan is about protecting India and the Silk Road (the central Asian countries with their oil and gas resources) for India and China.
But what to do about Afghanistan? It’s not true that it […]

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The latest kerfuffle about Christine O’Donnell is that she “faked” her “LinkedIn” page.
Huh? What is “linkedIn“? superficially it looks like a Facebook lookalike, but aimed at business folks.
So who “broke” the story? A California producer and graduate at the University of Berkeley in Rhetoric*, who works for the local Public radio station, and in the […]

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I love how Tom Friedman in the NYTimes lectures his US readers on “how the Chinese see us” by relating a skit on China’s government owned TV station where children were taught to ridicule the US:
China’s CCTV aired a skit showing four children… getting ready to run a race. Before they take off, the […]

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I am bemused when the elites of both parties are horrified at a woman candidate who overturned their chosen candidate in the primaries.
No surprise about this, after all the Press promises to promote the propaganda, never mind the truth of the matter. From the Atlantic:
Chuck Todd said it first…
“There will be an all out effort […]

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I’m old enough to remember when a doc took two dollars to see you in his office, and the entire staff was his wife (when I became a doctor, only 6 percent of docs were women, so yes, the doc was a “he).
In the 1980’s, I had one secretary, one nurse.and a […]

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Up popped a comment on my Facebook page:
American Medical News Do you think your practice is, or will be, ready for meaningful use?
Uh, silly me. True, I’m now retired, but I though that seeing 20 plus patients a day, diagnosing their ills, ordering their treatment, and (often) listening to their woes and advising them on […]

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I have to be honest. I haven’t been feeling the creative juices this last week. Thus, I haven’t written anything in almost a week. I sat down this morning looking for a little inspiration. As is often the case, I needed to look no further than the words of Ronald Reagan. If you scan through […]

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A bit of an uproar in Massachusetts, where the local papers have discovered that Senator Kerry bought a yacht, but has parked it in nearby Rhode Island to get out of paying the local sales tax.
The good news is that, now that he has been caught and shamed, he will pay the half million dollar […]

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