High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news.
BBG Watch Commentary U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, R-Miss., a leading Senator on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, is urging the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) to continue operating Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty’s (RFE/RL) Balkan Service and Radio Free Iraq. According to a press release from the senator’s office, Senator Wicker […]
While the press is full of news about Boyance and Justin Bieber, one of the completely ignored stories has been how China is busy taking over Africa. Not politically, of course, but by investing in minerals, exporting their cheap goods to Africa and establishing stores there to sell things cheaply, and by investing in farm […]
David Schussler Here we are a nation of escapists, having displaced the indigenous, having fucked up the old world as we (whether we knew it or not) looked for a new world to destroy. While escaping the harsh realities of personal responsibility for the lives we no longer wanted, we dragged a battery of philosophers […]
The latest episode of the “Consider This!” podcast is out. Conservative commentary in 10 minutes or less. Do more guns mean more murders and suicides? A Harvard study of European countries may surprise you. Or cause you to yawn in recognition of something we’ve long understood. Is the stem cell debate — embryonic vs adult — now […]
MariaElena at Fountain of Elias reminds us that Sept 24 is the (pre Vatican II) feast of Our Lady of Ransom. This feast was one of the church’s way of reminding folks of the many captured by various pirates and to raise money to ransom them. The origins of the Feast can be found in […]
Don’t pay attention to the quotes taken out of context and spun to make Pope Francis seem to the left of the trendier than thou Episcopal church. Go and read what he actually said, and what he has said in the past, and you will find nuances that don’t fit into sound bites. The Catholic […]
On August 15, 1939, a small British airliner took off from London, stopped in Hamburg, and was bound for Copenhagen. In addition to the pilot, there was an odd, if not mysterious, group of passengers on board: a German corporate lawyer, an English Member of Parliament, two employees of Standard Oil of New Jersey, and […]
It’s an open secret that the Obama administration dislikes the right wing, especially tea party types. So when the press goes out of their way to coverup the administration’s mistakes, such as allowing Susan Rice to insist that Benghazi was a riot caused by a second rate porn film, one can only shake one’s head […]
Think totalitarians are dull boys (and girls) who wear matchey matchey duds, never quaff cocktails or croon torch tunes in the wee small hours? If so, you’re wrong. No need for shame though. I thought the same. Until I found a copy of The Swingin’ Totalitarian: Vladimir Lenin Sings! in a box of old records […]
By just about any metric you can use, Spain is not doing well right now. Nearly 27% of the country is unemployed, their GDP continued to shrink in the last quarter, they have a credit squeeze that keeps interest rates far above the euro average and keeps new businesses from opening, and there are further […]
Welcome to the First Virtual Church of Our Lord and Savior, Steve Jobs. As you enter the sanctuary, please do not make eye contact with anyone. Keep your eyes focused on the screen of the mobile device of your choice. We are relevant and practice diversity here, which is easy since no one will even […]
“A politician thinks of the next election. A statesman, of the next generation.” James Freeman Clarke I suppose we all flirt with stupidity once in a while. The relationship that we should have seen was doomed from the start. The career move than wasn’t right and was made for the wrong reasons. The intemperate response […]
In the book The Hobbit, Bilbo was given a short contract that included “funeral expenses” and a right to one fourteenth percentage of the treasure. Peter Jackson in his usual fashion did Tolkien one better, so Balin gives Bilbo a long intricate paper contract with a lot more details, written in a satire of legalese. […]
From the Daily Mail in London: Sick children are being discharged from NHS hospitals to die at home or in hospices on controversial ‘death pathways’. Until now, end of life regime the Liverpool Care Pathway was thought to have involved only elderly and terminally-ill adults. But the Mail can reveal the practice of withdrawing food […]
Ninety-five years ago, a bunch of ignorant hoi polloi went out into the fields of a small rural town to see a predicted miracle, and the big city MSM was there to laugh at them and to record how the fools would respond when they found nothing happened. Whoops: (photo Via Tea at Trianon) Yes, […]
Rape, incest, or the life of the mother; these are typically the three reasons under which almost everyone would say that an abortion should be permissible. Well, an international symposium on maternal healthcare in Dublin, Ireland last weekend may reduce that number. About 140 medical professionals were at the event, including experts in obstetrics and […]
Everything in the news seems to be hyperventillation about politics. What is worse, it seems to be about trivia that have little or nothing to do with the world wide economic problems, or about trying to fix them. (e.g. a friend on facebook dissing Ryan’s marathon speed instead of the details of his budget). So […]
Forget the soap opera about the coddled rich of Downton Abby. Move over reality shows like the Kardashians or Tots and Tiaras. If you want a slice of reality, you might want to check on the latest BBC miniseries on PBS: Call the Midwife. Call the Midwife is a moving and intimate insight into the […]
Yes, Children, he says it would have been okay for Sarah to kill Trig and sex with animals is okay too (as long as it is not cruel). But never mind: Being green means never to say you are sorry. So Peter Singer has been rewarded by being given a major government award by Australia, […]
Okay, parents. Your 13 year old makes a decision that he wants to do something that has a 2 percent chance to be fatal. Do you 1) Forbid him to do it. 2) Try to talk him out of this but if he refuses to listen to your concerns, allow him to do it anyway […]
All is fair in love and war and, I suppose we have to accept, politics as well. ‘Twas ever thus perhaps – only someone seriously ignorant of history would say that politics has ever been free of cant and cover up and of posturing and play-acting. As Harry Truman said “If you don’t like the […]
While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people…
The NYTimes has an article about problems with the Global fund to fight AIDS. It seems that they checked the books and found some of the money was stolen or diverted, and as a result, a lot of European donors are not giving any more money until the problem is cleared up. You want honesty […]
Whenever I try to give credit to Ronald Reagan for participating in the fall of the Soviet Union, I often hear that its fall was an inevitability, and it just so happened to occur on Reagan’s watch. I have to point out to them that Reagan was the first President to come along with an […]
No, it’s not a fantasy for kids, but about the dragons that lurk in the dark places of the mind. And the setting of the drama has enough controversies to make the ideologues of the left and rights, the religious and the skeptical, to be suspicious and stay away. Why? Because the film discusses the […]
London seems to have exploded into a sea of discontent. Rioting, looting, and willful destruction. Of course this has not made much news in the US. We are too busy spiraling into an economic black hole to have time for international news. I could offer advice, get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan, stop […]
A lot of Americans seem puzzled about why NATO is so eager to get rid of Khadafi in Libya. Yes, he was behind the TWA bombing, but why get rid of him now? But what the US press also misses is why Libyans are angry. To paraphrase James Carville: It’s the corruption, stupid. Khadafi has […]
I am old enough to remember when women were exiled into specific specialties in medicine (quick: how many women Urologists do you know), and a similar problem was seen in college (few women in my advanced science classes) and in the newspaper (where women often were expected to write fluffy reports for the fashion and […]
 The man was well until his wife baked him a “healthy recipe” from the NYTimes “Healthy recipe section: Fava bean and artichoke stew. He soon became pale and jaundiced, and it took awhile for the ER doc to figure out why the man was sick. He had an acute hemolytic crisis, where his red blood […]
The outbreak of E Coli induced Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome by those who ate salads in northern Germany is still a puzzle. First they blamed Spain for dirty cucumbers (implications: Spaniards are not as clean as Germans). This has caused a lot of financial problems for Spanish farmers, and it doesn’t help that it’s now found […]
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