what is happening today
Don Boudreaux, Chairman of the Department of Economics at George Mason University, occasionally comes up with some great lines, his latest:
“Almost all that any politician says on any topic other than political strategy should be treated with even less respect than would be accorded a professional circus-clown’s speculations about string theory.”
You have to love it when someone gets to the heart of an issue. The rest of the post is pretty good as well.
NY Times has just published an article that points out an interesting emerging trend in Iraq. Young people have lost their faith in their religious leaders. Wow, unexpected. Personally I think developments like these bode well for a long-term movement away from radicalism.
Marc Andreesen is turning out to be one of my favorite bloggers. He is always publishing witty insights both in and out of the tech & business world. He has a great post today on his meeting with Barack Obama in 2007. If you weren’t an Obama supporter beforehand this post may very well make you (Full Disclosure: I am an Obama supporter).
Joe Stiglitz, Noble prize winning economist, savages Bush in a must read article over at Vanity Fair. In the article he predicts a generation long struggle for America to recoup its position in the world, not a pretty picture.
Will the doomsayers win this time around? Or will the US pull off another remarkable recovery? Only time will tell…
John Stoessel has a brilliant op-ed response to Michael Moore’s Sicko in today’s Wall Street Journal.
Great reading and highly recommended.
Walter Mondale, former Vice President to ex-President Jimmy Carter, has a must-read editorial in today’s Washington Post. Mondale details how he partnered with then President Carter to re-define the role of the Vice-Presidency, from backwater political office to the President’s closest and most trusted advisor.
Carter & Mondale’s re-definition continued through both Republican and Democratic Presidencies. Mondale argues that Dick Cheney has re-defined the office yet again. According to Mondale (& I heartily agree), Cheney’s re-definition has taken the VP office in a disturbing direction, from trusted advisor to a powerful political office that attempts to actually limit the policy options presented to the President.
Yet another scathing examination of a Presidency in tatters. What will be the future ramifications of Cheney’s Vice Presidency? Who knows? The best possible outcome is that it is forgotten, a grimmer possibility is a permanent politicization of the office and for future Presidents the loss of another trusted objective voice.
Recently I had an opportunity to see Michael Moore’s latest titled Sicko. Sicko is a devastating indictment of the US healthcare system. In a work that evokes the great muckrakers of the past Moore tackles a deep and complex subject in a coarse, and at times, vulgar way. That shouldn’t be taken as an indictment of the film or the message. Moore is quite effective at driving his point home, devastatingly so at times.
I am not a big fan of Moore’s work but Sicko is a profound moving movie with an effectively delivered and important message. American healthcare needs to be reformed and it needs to be reformed sooner rather than later. Hopefully our politicians will wake up and do something and if they don’t Sicko may wake up enough people to prompt some action. I highly recommend Sicko and I hope Moore stays out of politics.
Disneyland in China? No, not Walt Disney, instead a complete knockoff including Mickey, Minnie, & the rest of the gang. Apparently not owned by Disney. Talk about real intellectual property theft.
Pictures and fun over at japanprobe.
“Buying the War” was finally broadcast last night and it may well be called Moyers’ finest work ever. In “Buying the War” Moyers presents a sobering inside look at how nearly the entire journalist profession shirked its most basic tenets and became complicit in pushing the US into a war based almost entirely on lies.
These are strong words coming from me, if you peruse some of my posts from that time you will find that in general I was quite hawkish. (As an aside, how do I feel now? I was lied to, I was manipulated, I was used, so was my country, and our soldiers. The war should have never occurred and the administration did everything in its power to fool its own citizens. I am deeply pissed off and ashamed I didn’t question the party line more. I showed my wrath last election and will show it the next one as well.)
In any case, Bill Moyers “Buying the War” is a stunning first show for the new Bill Moyers Journal series on PBS. Its programs like this that make me glad I have a tv. You can watch is online as well over at http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/btw/watch.html.
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I had been closely following the saga of James Kim. I was greatly saddened when I read that they had found his body. So sad, best wishes to his family.