Archive for the 'pol' Category

This is a great movie

Published Date: April 12th, 2008
Category: reviews, pol

Movie reivew: “State of the Union“, starring Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn. 
An industrialist (Tracy) starts a run for the presidency.  He begins with fire and ideas, but twists to follow the professional politicos who promise to get him elected.
 (transcribed from the DVD, all credit goes to the real writers)
The politicos talking about their man, and a long-standing […]

Research night: one book, two documentaries, and a map

Published Date: February 20th, 2008
Category: health, pol

This morning, I looked up a handful of autism links.  I was trying to remember the title/author of a book I’d read back in 1992 or so.  My step-mom Judy, who taught special-ed in the public schools, recommended the book, an autobiography written by an autistic lady.  (No, not Temple Grandin.  I read that one later, […]

Weekly news

Published Date: September 23rd, 2007
Category: pol, biz

Ah, Sunday.  Breakfast done.  Relaxing with a mug of tea, and my weekly Economist.
From the leader for the cover article, “Will the credit crisis trigger a downturn?”:
But there are cycles in all things: underpricing begets excess, which begets a reckoning. For a while at least, many people and businesses will have to pay more to borrow, […]

We can’t finish a war…

Published Date: December 17th, 2006
Category: pol

We can’t seem to finish a war.  We again let ourselves get tricked into waging war on foreign soil, and again a clever groups of guerrillas is stymying (is that a word?) progress toward the (few) good results that could have been achieved.
I don’t compare the start of Iraq to Vietnam — Iraq was started by […]

Where’s the nuance?

Published Date: September 27th, 2006
Category: pol

Naturally, I’m talking about the polarized responses and readings of the redacted NIE published yesterday.
Why do Americans have no capacity for nuance?  “Jihadists are increasing” doesn’t mean “we should pull out of Iraq now”.  Dems aren’t doing themselves any services by mis-interpreting and overstating this point.
In fact, if you read closely, the analysis says that jihadists are increasing their […]