The Overlooked Big Stories of 2012 December 29, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Geopolitics, In The News, News and politics.Tags: Geopolitics
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Andres Oppenheimer is a Miami Herald syndicated columnist and a member of The Miami Herald team that won the 1987 Pulitzer Prize, has a nifty list of 5 important, but overlooked stories that will have big implications in the years ahead.
- In 2017, US becomes World’s biggest oil producer
- Corruption’s threat to China’s Leadership’s legitimacy
- The Trans Pacific Trade Partnership
- Secessionist movements shaking Europe
Oppenheimer: The really important news of 2012 – Andres Oppenheimer – MiamiHerald.com.
The Coming Surge of Cuban Refugees December 29, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in In The News, News and politics.Tags: Cuba, Refugees
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In October, the Cuban government announced that it would no longer require the much-hated exit visa for anyone wishing to travel abroad. All a Cuban citizen will need is a passport and a visa for the country he plans to visit. This new Cuban policy takes effect January 14th.
The problem is, under current American law, a “visit” to the United States can immediately award a Cuban full refugee status, then permanent residency and citizenship, under the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966.
For decades, Cubans have been trying to sail to the US and then dock or swim ashore before immigration agents catch up with them. For those who made it past the US Coast Guard gauntlet, once their feet touched the beach they were given legal admission. During the fiscal year that ended in September, the Coast Guard said it caught 1,275 Cubans trying to arrive by boat—the highest total since 2008. Uncounted others made it ashore, where they immediately received their unique American embrace.
Starting January 14th, however, Cuba will allow them to leave by any means of their choice. And all they’ll have to do is walk off the airplane in Miami or anywhere else in the US to be awarded refugee status. The change could lead to many thousands of new Cuban refugees every month, joining the two million Cubans and their descendants already here. But you don’t hear anyone in Washington even mentioning this problem, given the urgent concerns about Iran, North Korea, the fiscal cliff, and so much else.
via The Coming Surge of Cuban Refugees | World Affairs Journal.
A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe July 7, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Lifestyle, News and politics.Tags: Decriminalisation, War on Drugs
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This report looks at over 20 countries that have adopted some form of decriminalisation of drug possession, including some States that have only decriminalised cannabis possession. The main aim of the report was to look at the existing research to establish whether the adoption of a decriminalised policy led to significant increases in drug use – the simple answer is that it did not.
via A Quiet Revolution: Drug Decriminalisation Policies in Practice Across the Globe.
California Doesn’t Learn From China’s Train Wreck July 7, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, Enviroment, News and politics, Technology.Tags: California, China, High-Speed Rail
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In California’s Legislature just authorized to spend, with Federal assistance, an under-estimated $100 billion to build a route between San Francisco and Los Angeles that will consist of a government monopoly riding on tracks near one of the largest earthquake faults in the world for most of its length, all to deliver passengers slower and at greater overall cost between two fixed points. Airlines give consumers a choice of carriers and airports on either end of that route, will deliver passengers more quickly, and probably with a much wider choice of departure and arrival times.
In China the problem — beyond the idea of spending untold billions on the antiquated technology of static choo-choo trains — is that the three people making all these wonderful decisions now have a high-speed rail system plagued by failure, corruption, out-of-control costs and legitimate safety concerns
The fact is that China’s train wreck was eminently foreseeable. High-speed rail is a capital-intensive undertaking that requires huge borrowing upfront to finance tracks, locomotives and cars, followed by years in which ticket revenue covers debt service — if all goes well. “Any . . . shortfall in ridership or yield, can quickly create financial stress,” warns a 2010 World Bank staff report.
Such “shortfalls” are all too common. Japan’s bullet trains needed a bailout in 1987. Taiwan’s line opened in 2007 and needed a government rescue in 2009. In France, only the Paris-Lyon high-speed line is in the black.
William Jefferson Gingrich January 26, 2012
Posted by tkcollier in In The News, News and politics, philosophy & politics.Tags: Clinton, Newt, philosophy & politics, Politics
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How long have I been saying it? At least for 15 years, but in private I have been aware of it longer. Newt Gingrich is conservatism’s Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit but he has all the charm of barbed wire.
Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy. Newt, like Bill, has a proclivity for girl hopping. It is not as egregious as Bill’s, but then Newt is not as drop-dead beautiful. His public record is already besmeared with tawdry divorces, and there are private encounters with the fair sex that doubtless will come out. Thanks to my big brother for this piece.
There is the 99% and the 1% – And Now the 2% November 4, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Humor, In The News, News and politics.add a comment
Thanks to Juan Marcos, part of the 99%
More of “As the World Bopps Along” May 8, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Humor, In The News, News and politics.Tags: Entertainment, Humor, In the News
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Rim Shots
There’s already been some trouble for Osama bin Laden in the afterlife.There was a mix up and he was greeted by 72 vegans.
President Obama gave the order for Navy SEALs to kill bin Laden. When President Bush heard about it, he was really upset, saying, ‘I could have used seals?
It should be pointed out that on the same night Obama was sending a SEAL team to kill Osama Bin Laden, his potential opponent in 2012, Donald Trump was busy firing Playmate of the Month Hope Dworaczyk.
I suppose I should be expressing some ambivalence about the targeted killing of another human being. And yet, in this case — uhhhh, no. I’m good with it.
Apparently there is some controversy over Bin Laden’s last words. One report said that they were: “Damn it! ‘What on earth could be interrupting ‘Celebrity Apprentice?!”
Donald Trump is going to make an announcement about running for President on the season finale of ‘Celebrity Apprentice.’ Not to be outdone, on the same night the Cake Boss will reveal his plan for overhauling Medicare.
But most seem to
think that his last words were probably more along the lines of what what most Somali pirates, Al Qaeda bigwigs, and other bad guys usually say when hearing that a SEAL team has come out to play.. : “Oh, crap!”
Bin Laden’s Headstone
BIN LADEN STILL DEAD
Trump takes credit, reports being “proud of myself.”
Bin Laden and his security team are usually much more vigilant, but they were all distracted watching Royal Wedding highlights.
The Republicans will credit extension of the Bush tax cuts for the success of the mission.
Klan wizard Donald Trump and his Buffoons of Bigotry Brigade (they need a new name now that ‘Birthers’ is passe) will claim it’s a hoax and demand to see the long-form death certificate.
“I’ve never wished a man dead . . . but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure” – Mark Twain
SEAL Team Six: When you care enough to send the very best
SEAL team Six has an official motto: “The Only Easy Day Was Yesterday”.They also have an unofficial motto (I’m not making this up) which they refer to as WGMATTS. The acronym is for “We get more @ss than toilet seats”. Hey, what do you expect? These are hard-core, to-the-death fighters on a team so black-ops that it technically doesn’t exist. For them, on most missions, like this last one, failure is not an option. It’s either succeed or you don’t come home.So the unofficial motto is part of a darkly macho sense of humor that keeps them going.
They are the best of the best at what they do, and they fight the worst of the worst, and we’re d@mn fortunate to have them on our side. And as far as this American is concerned, lads . . . get some . . . you’ve earned it.
WORLD NEWS
LAST-MINU
TE PROBLEMS NEARLY TORPEDOED ROYAL WEDDING
Queen reportedly was upset by learning that the couple have decided to have an open marriage.
Foreign Minister Says Japan Once Again Open for Business
Crippled Fukushima nuclear power plant rebranded as tourist attraction.
Iran: Ahmadinejad Rumored Stepping Down
According to publicist for “Dancing With the Stars.”
U.S. to Give Libyan Rebels $25 Million in Non-Lethal Aid
Half in tanning technology, half in acting classes.
McCain Pushing Libyan Escalation
“Roughly a half-million U.S. troops and it will be a cakewalk.”
ALSO IN THE NEWS . . .
Visitors, Banned for 20 Years, Once Again Allowed in Leaning Tower of Pisa
Catastrophic accident insurance now included in price of admission.
(from The Onion) Vatican Beatifies John Paul II As Patron Saint of Ignoring a Serious Problem Until You Die
And then being credited with performing a “miracle” for something that happened AFTER you were dead (more…)
“federal government is now an insurance company with an army” April 9, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in News and politics, philosophy & politics.Tags: Federal Budget, philosophy & politics
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The Government Accountability Office concludes that America faces a “fiscal gap” of $99.4 trillion over the next 75 years, which would mean we would have to increase taxes by 50% or reduce spending by 35% simply to stop accumulating more debt. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security will together make up 50% of the federal budget by 2021.
For liberals, the long-term fiscal crisis should seem devastating. If entitlement programs continue to grow, they will soon crowd out almost all other government spending. Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein has pointed out that the federal government is now an insurance company with an army. This means that there will be little money left for programs to address income inequality, poverty, education, infrastructure, science and technology, research and all the other purposes of active, energetic government.
As The News Bopps Along March 18, 2011
Posted by tkcollier in Humor, In The News, News and politics.add a comment
Cut Here. Invest There December 26, 2010
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, News and politics, philosophy & politics.Tags: Deficit, Financial Crisis, philosophy & politics
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Borrowing billions more from China to give ourselves more tax cuts does not qualify. Make no mistake, President Obama has enacted an enormous amount in two years. It’s impressive. But the really hard stuff lies ahead: taking things away. We are leaving an era where to be a mayor, governor, senator or president was, on balance, to give things away to people. And we are entering an era where to be a leader will mean, on balance, to take things away from people. It is the only way we’ll get our fiscal house in order before the market, brutally, does it for us.
To survive in the 21st century, America can no longer afford a politics of irresponsible profligacy. But to thrive in the 21st century — to invest in education, infrastructure and innovation — America cannot afford a politics of mindless austerity either.
The politicians we need are what I’d call “pay-as-you-go progressives” — those who combine fiscal prudence with growth initiatives to make their cities, their states or our country great again. Everyone knows the first rule of holes: When you’re in one, stop digging. But people often forget the second rule of holes: You can only grow your way out. You can’t borrow your way out.
What We Believe – Poll August 31, 2010
Posted by tkcollier in Humor, Lifestyle, News and politics.Tags: Afghanistan, Drugs, Emily Post, Poll, Sarah Palin, Software, war
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The latest 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll, which surveyed 847 adults by telephone nationwide earlier this month, tracks Americans thoughts on a variety of topics from Afghanistan and illegal drugs to Mel Gibson and sexual harassment at work.
Some highlights:
— 33% of people think ghosts are likely to actually exist; while another 30% voted for the existence of U.F.O.’s. A smaller percentage of folks think vampires, the Loch Ness monster and Bigfoot could exist. Sadly, King Kong and Godzilla did not make the list.
— Nearly 90% of Americans would not try LSD, ecstasy, heroin, crystal meth or crack one time — even if there was no possibility of harmful physical consequences, criminal charges or addiction.
The October 2010 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair Poll | The Magazine | Vanity Fair.
Ex IMF Chief Economist Warns US April 26, 2010
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, News and politics.add a comment
The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time.
What Conservative David Frum Wrote That Caused A Furor March 28, 2010
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No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat.
There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible. How do you negotiate with somebody who wants to murder your grandmother? Or – more exactly – with somebody whom your voters have been persuaded to believe wants to murder their grandmother?
When Rush Limbaugh said that he wanted President Obama to fail, he was intelligently explaining his own interests. What he omitted to say – but what is equally true – is that he also wants Republicans to fail. If Republicans succeed – if they govern successfully in office and negotiate attractive compromises out of office – Rush’s listeners get less angry. And if they are less angry, they listen to the radio less, and hear fewer ads for Sleepnumber beds.
via Waterloo | FrumForum.
What The Tea Party And Hippies Have In Common March 5, 2010
Posted by tkcollier in News and politics, philosophy & politics.Tags: Hippies, News and politics, philosophy & politics, Tea Party
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About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.
About 40 years ago, a social movement arose to destroy the establishment. The people we loosely call the New Left wanted to take on The Man, return power to the people, upend the elites and lead a revolution.
via Op-Ed Columnist – The Wal-Mart Hippies – NYTimes.com. (more…)
Simple Health-Care Reform August 8, 2009
Posted by tkcollier in health, News and politics.Tags: health, News and politics
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There is no logical reason to get health insurance through your employer. This entire system is an accident of World War II wage and price controls. It’s economically senseless. It makes people stay in jobs they hate, decreasing labor mobility and therefore overall productivity. And it needlessly increases the anxiety of losing your job by raising the additional specter of going bankrupt through illness.
The health-care benefit exemption is the largest tax break in the entire U.S. budget, costing the government a quarter-trillion dollars annually. It hinders health-insurance security and portability as well as personal independence. If we additionally eliminated the prohibition on buying personal health insurance across state lines, that would inject new and powerful competition that would lower costs for everyone.
Abolish the entire medical-malpractice system. Create a new social pool from which people injured in medical errors or accidents can draw. The adjudication would be done by medical experts, not lay juries giving away lottery prizes at the behest of the liquid-tongued John Edwardses who pocket a third of the proceeds.
The pool would be funded by a relatively small tax on all health-insurance premiums. Socialize the risk; cut out the trial lawyers. Would that immunize doctors from carelessness or negligence? No. The penalty would be losing your medical license. There is no more serious deterrent than forfeiting a decade of intensive medical training and the livelihood that comes with it.
via Charles Krauthammer – A Better Plan for Health-Care Reform – washingtonpost.com.
Freedom To Criticize Faith Threatened April 12, 2009
Posted by tkcollier in News and politics, Religion.add a comment
History has shown that once governments begin to police speech, they find ever more of it to combat. Countries such as Canada, England and France have prosecuted speakers and journalists for criticizing homosexuals and other groups. It’s the ultimate irony: free speech curtailed for the sake of a pluralistic society.
Religious orthodoxy has always lived in tension with free speech. Yet Western ideals are based on the premise that free speech contains its own protection: Good speech ultimately prevails over bad. There’s no blasphemy among free nations, only orthodoxy and those who seek to challenge it.
Charles Krauthammer – The Obama Inaugural: Hail Washington — Not Lincoln January 24, 2009
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This from one of the “Conservative” voices that Obama dined with at George Will’s house just before the Inauguration Speech reviewed below. Fascinating speech. It was so rhetorically flat, so lacking in rhythm and cadence, one almost has to believe he did it on purpose. Best not to dazzle on Opening Day. Otherwise, they’ll expect magic all the time.
The most striking characteristic of Barack Obama is not his nimble mind, engaging manner or wide-ranging intellectual curiosity. It’s the absence of neediness. He’s Bill Clinton, master politician, but without the hunger.
Clinton craves your adulation (the source of all his troubles). Obama will take it, but he can leave it, too. He is astonishingly self-contained. He gives what he must to advance his goals, his programs, his ambitions. But no more. He has no need to.
via Charles Krauthammer – The Obama Inaugural: Hail Washington — Not Lincoln.
France’s Obama December 24, 2008
Posted by tkcollier in News and politics.Tags: Obama
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Born in France to poor Muslim immigrant parents, French Justice Minister Rachida Dati is a powerful symbol of a society that is changing rapidly, if reluctantly. Intelligent, young, ambitious, attractive, she is a fighter driven by outsize ambition and cheekiness in a country where immigrants rarely attain stellar heights in business, academia, the media, or government. Her ascendance is the French version of “Yes We Can.”
via The Storm Around France’s First Muslim Cabinet Minister, Rachida Dati – US News and World Report.
Why 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Linger November 27, 2007
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Tinfoil Nation: Why 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Linger
A majority of Americans say it is “likely” that their government knew about the September 11 attacks in advance and ignored the warning, a recent poll revealed: more evidence that what were once considered loony fringe theories have penetrated the U.S. mainstream. Richard Miniter examines the roots of the claims and debunks them.
Why does this conspiracy theory linger? Historian Joseph E. Persico argues that it is simply human nature. Persico is an acknowledged expert on the last surprise attack on the American homeland, the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. He notes that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had some inkling of Japan’s dark designs before the December 7, 1941 attack. Relations between Washington and Tokyo had been souring for years and the U.S. was opposed to Japan’s bloody invasion and occupation of eastern China. So FDR knew that Japan might attack at some point. But there was no intelligence suggesting that Japan would attack at Pearl Harbor or when it would attack or how. Still FDR’s critics and many others continue to suspect that he knew all along and that he allowed Pearl Harbor to happen as a “backdoor to war.”
“Why do conspiracy theories keep sprouting?” Persico asks. “Neat, suspenseful plots create high drama, while the truth is often messy, contradictory, even dull.”
Unfortunately, the same is true today. Bush’s critics are as misguided as FDR’s.
Obama to End the Culture Wars? November 25, 2007
Posted by tkcollier in In The News, News and politics, philosophy & politics, Politics.Tags: Obama
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Consevative blogger Andrew Sullivan comes out for Obama with this week’s “Atlantic” magazine’s Cover Story, as the cure for our ongoing, self-destructive 60′s Boomers Culture War.
The Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce.
Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.
We may in fact have finally found that bridge to the 21st century that Bill Clinton told us about. Its name is Obama.
Where have all the Neocons Gone? October 18, 2007
Posted by tkcollier in Geopolitics, News and politics, philosophy & politics.1 comment so far
Neo Culpa: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
I interviewed some of the neocons before the invasion and, like many people, found much to admire in their vision of spreading democracy in the Middle East.
I expect to encounter disappointment. What I find instead is despair, and fury at the incompetence of the Bush administration many neocons once saw as their brightest hope.
Mark Foley Revealed October 15, 2007
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Mark Foley’s Private Life: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com
Everyone knew Mark Foley was gay. Everyone. And everyone who had a stake in his success—party, press, parents, staff, supporters, and pages—conspired for their own purposes to keep the closet half closed.
Born at the peak of the baby boom, in 1954, he grew up near Palm Beach, in the scrappy little town of Lake Worth, Florida, which in recent years has become a popular refuge for gay retirees. That subculture most likely did not enter into the consciousness of his parents, Irish Catholics from Massachusetts.
And Now For The Good News, from the UN October 9, 2007
Posted by tkcollier in Economy & Business, Enviroment, Geopolitics, In The News, Lifestyle, News and politics, philosophy & politics, Politics.add a comment
Clear-Eyed Optimists – WSJ.com
In the late 60′s a group of scientists calling themselves the Club of Rome issued a report called “Limits to Growth.” It explained that lifeboat Earth had become so weighed down with humans that we were running out of food, minerals, forests, water, energy and just about everything else that we need for survival. Paul Ehrlich’s best-selling book “The Population Bomb” (1968) gave England a 50-50 chance of surviving into the 21st century. In 1980, Jimmy Carter released the “Global 2000 Report,” which declared that life on Earth was getting worse in every measurable way.
So imagine how shocked I was to learn, officially, that we’re not doomed after all. A new United Nations report called “State of the Future” concludes: “People around the world are becoming healthier, wealthier, better educated, more peaceful, more connected, and they are living longer.”
Yes, of course, there was the obligatory bad news: Global warming is said to be getting worse and income disparities are widening. But the joyous trends in health and wealth documented in the report indicate a gigantic leap forward for humanity. This is probably the first time you’ve heard any of this because — while the grim “Global 2000″ and “Limits to Growth” reports were deemed worthy of headlines across the country — the media mostly ignored the good news and the upbeat predictions of “State of the Future.”
But here they are: World-wide illiteracy rates have fallen by half since 1970 and now stand at an all-time low of 18%. More people live in free countries than ever before. The average human being today will live 50% longer in 2025 than one born in 1955. (more…)
And Now For Some Good News June 6, 2006
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Give a click and read the White House Press Office spin on current events.
It’ll Be Gore again not Hilary May 16, 2006
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Andrew Sullivan | The Daily Dish: It’ll Be Gore?
…but once Feingold exposes that Hillary has been wrong on so many issues Dems care about (Iraq, civil liberties, Iraq, attacking Bush), she’ll be reduced to normal size for others to take on. Gore can sit back and watch Feingold do the dirty work and get in as Hillary weakens.
Gore’s big advantages: he’s been right on the issues, he retains stature among Democrats, and, surprisingly, he’ll appear fresh from being away so long. Other than SNL last night, when was the last time you saw Gore on TV (and if you didn’t see Gore on SNL see it here) and you will soon see his environmental documentary in the theatres
