Carson's PostCarson's PostTwo guys talking about politics and current events, a generation apart. Articles
Gates: No plans, no proposals ? no confidence
2007-10-11 17:50:00 We can be forgiven for thinking that no one in the US has any idea what they are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan . This account Gates plays down report Marines want Iraq exit positively define confusion. Isn’t Gates supposed to be in charge of all of this? U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Thursday played down a ... More About: United States , War , Plans
The Nobel Prize for Lit and Every Bloody Other One
2007-10-11 17:43:00 “I’ve won all the prizes in Europe, every bloody one. I’m delighted to win them all, the whole lot. It’s a royal flush.” Doris Lessing on winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. The story is here: Britain’s Lessing wins Nobel for literature. More About: Books , Nobel Prize , Bloody
Religion, get you own House in order before you worry about the Other
2007-10-11 17:39:00 This letter (see Muslim scholars reach out to Pope) that the 130 Muslim scholars have sent to the Catholic Pope and other Christian church leaders seems to be trying to head-off a clash of religions. Is that a viable issue today? I think not. Shouldn’t those Muslim scholars be addressing their own flock? Shouldn’t they be up-in-arms ... More About: Religion , House , Worry , Order , The O
Why is education so hapless?
2007-10-11 17:08:00 Schools in every country in the world are viewed as invaluable and take up increasing proportions of state budgets, yet there is no widely held and proven ’science’ on how to educate effectively. Why is that? Why doesn’t all of humanity have predictable best practices on how to allow the different personality types to learn effectively? ... More About: Education , Duca
The obvious answer to the torture question
2007-10-10 20:30:00 This is the answer to the torture question that everyone seems to have such a hard time with. Hillary is right and so, now, is Bill: More About: Politics , United States , Question , Answer , Torture
US Baghdad Embassy ? not yet buying a turkey
2007-10-10 19:23:00 Sure, everything else was falling apart, but the mammoth US Embassy in Iraq was always on-time and on-budget. Remember? Ah, not so much. The sprawling complex, whose cost is edging toward $750 million, was set to open last month but U.S. lawmakers say shoddy work by the contractor and poor oversight by the State Department have ... More About: United States , Buying , Turkey , Baghdad
Dumbing down and the futile fumblings of CNN
2007-10-10 19:04:00 Does CNN have a personality, a identifiable brand? Who personifies it: Nancy Grace, Glenn Beck, Larry King, Aaron ? ah, Paula, Wolf? Increasingly, the new voices of CNN are bellowing blowhards. Rick Sanchez comes to mind, he of the deep voice, pretty face and incessant histrionics that positively shouts: ITS ALL ABOUT ME! He is unwatchable. ... More About: Media , Bing
Conrad Black, the musical?
2007-10-10 18:47:00 God, wouldn’t that be great? Who would play Babs? And how big the wardrobe budget? The speculation is here: Coming soon: A Conrad Black musical? More About: Musical , Conrad Black , Lack
The Invisible Hand of the Israel Lobby
2007-10-10 18:25:00 Further to the post below, it would seem that the invisible fingers of the Israel Lobby is engaged here in its typically dexterous slight of hand. A sharp debate is under way in the Bush administration about the significance of the Israeli intelligence that led to last month?s Israeli strike inside Syria, according to current and ... More About: Middle East , United States , Hand , Invisible
The Israel Lobby: is it the The Deadliest Lies?
2007-10-10 18:15:00 That the Israel Lobby, through the neocons, talked the US into war with Iraq and is trying very hard to talk the US into war with Iran seems a no-brainer. I watched Bibi Netanyahu, sitting with the preposterous Glenn Beck a few months ago, declare that Iran was months away from having a nuclear bomb and ... More About: United States , Lies
Why are emails emotionally flat?
2007-10-10 17:27:00 Why are emails so emotionally ‘off?’ They inevitably seems flat, cool even dead. Here is an explanation E-Mail Is Easy to Write (and to Misread) by Daniel Coleman in the New York Times. An extract: New findings have uncovered a design flaw at the interface where the brain encounters a computer screen: there are no online channels ... More About: Internet , Emails , Ally , Flat , Emotional
Where are the 4 million displaced Iraqis?
2007-10-10 17:03:00 Over 4 million Iraq is have been displaced from their homes. Where have they fled to? Syria: 1,400,000 Jordan: 750,000 Gulf states: 200,000 Egypt: 100,000 Iran: 54,000 Lebanon: 40,000 Turkey: 10,000 Internally displaced: 2,250,000 The dislocation of over 2 million within the country is so disruptive that provinces are refusing entry to internal refugees, as this BBC article points out: Doors closing on Iraqi displaced. More About: War , Million
The polite politics of BC Bud
2007-10-10 16:42:00 Woa, how polite is this? A 2006 law allows British Columbia hydro to share its power consumption records with other authorities. And they take advantage of it. A team of inspectors, including a firefighter, an electrician, an administrative employee and two policemen, visit from 70 to 80 homes a month. Whose homes? Well, those showing power consumption levels ... More About: Politics , Economics , Lifestyle , Canada , Legal
The case of Hirsi Ali and why we should all give a damn
2007-10-09 21:23:00 The Dutch Parliament will be debating Hirsi Ali?s case this week: whether or not the Dutch should pay for Ms Ali’s protection in the United States to where she has been forced to flee. Sam Harris and Salman Rushdie tell her story: Ayaan Hirsi Ali: abandoned to fanatics As you read this, Ayaan Hirsi Ali sits in a ... More About: Free Speech , Case , Give , Damn
On Clarence Thomas and 60 Minutes
2007-10-09 20:00:00 I watched Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on 60 Minutes on Sunday with a sense of awe. Here is a man who has risen to the very pinnacle, not only of his profession, but of power, yet he seemed so bitter, so angry, so vengeful. To me, this made him seem pitiful and absurd, like the ... More About: United States , Legal , Clarence Thomas
Nike: Hockey takes another hit
2007-10-09 19:06:00 First, US sports broadcaster ESPN dumped hockey for what? maybe beach volleyball or monster truck rodeos. Now Nike has dumped the game. “The reality is hockey’s a declining market in the U.S.,” says Jim Rennie who published Jim Rennie’s Sport s Letter, a widely read sporting goods newsletter, from 1977 to 2002. Indeed, USA Hockey figures show that in ...
The Odyssey Years
2007-10-09 18:55:00 Sometimes a newspaper column can really open your eyes. Like this one: The O dyssey Years By David Brooks, NY Times There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, ... More About: Media , Lifestyle , Journalism
The Pakistan democratic election that wasn?t
2007-10-09 18:18:00 Here is the New York Time’s take on Gen. Musharraf?s Cynical Win Gen. Pervez Musharraf?s ?election? last weekend as Pakistan ?s president was a perversion of democracy. The vote was not really a vote since, knowing how badly the deck was stacked, the opposition parties refused to participate. The results must now be certified by the Supreme Court, ... More About: Democratic , Election
Beer: merging with gusto
2007-10-09 17:01:00 Such is the corporate lust for market share and profits that we see paragraphs like this on the business page: Molson Coors Brewing Co. shares foamed up to a healthy 11 per cent gain after the opening bell, courtesy of news that it and Anglo-South African brewer SABMiller Plc are merging their U.S. and Puerto Rican ... More About: Beer , Corporations , Merging , Gusto
Organ donation: what do the fundamentalists say?
2007-10-09 16:34:00 Is organ donation a ‘Christian Duty?’ The Anglican church in England thinks so. Body parts should not be mistaken for the person themselves, and the best way to treat them reverently is to use them to heal others, said the Church which would welcome the creation of a European donor pool. “Giving oneself and one’s possessions voluntarily ... More About: Religion , Donation , Organ Donation , Fundamentalist , Amen
Is Blackwater toast in Iraq?
2007-10-09 16:19:00 Last week, Blackwater founder and CEO Erik Prince seemed to escape a Capital Hill inquiry into Blackwater’s affairs in Iraq relatively unscathed. Today, he is being scathed. Iraq has demanded that the US end its association with private security firm Blackwater within six months. It accuses Blackwater guards of having deliberately fired on Iraqi civilians, killing 17 ... More About: Politics , United States , War , Toast
The Land mine ban 10 years on
2007-10-09 16:06:00 Casualties have dropped from an estimated 26,000 a year to a little more than 7,000 a year at last count. Some 40 million mines in stockpiles or buried in the ground have been destroyed. Even most countries that haven’t signed abide by the treaty, and international trade in land mines has virtually dried up. Those are ... More About: Technology , War , Mine , Land , Years
Hirisi Ali: On Free Speech and Protection
2007-10-08 20:31:00 When a citizen speaks out about militant Islam, does her country have the responsibility to protect her? That’s the issue in a very good column A Dutch Retreat on Speech ? by Washington Post’s Anne Applebaum. Hirisi Ali is a Dutch-Somali who has been under police protection since 2002 because of her out-spoken views about her former religion, ... More About: Free , Free Speech
Are Broadcast Regulators in the Pockets of the Broadcasters?
2007-10-08 19:49:00 The theory is easy enough to understand: the airwaves are owned by the people, therefore broadcasters, who are given access to the frequencies, have a responsibility to provide, in addition to their commercial programming, a public service, aka News. This balanced has worked well for years ? until the broadcasters started making all their component pieces ... More About: Politics , Economics , United States , Technology , Broadcast
Futuristic car makes reversing obsolete
2007-10-08 18:42:00 Rather than turn the car around, turn the cabin? Is this an idea whose time has come? Nissan is banking on it with its Pivo 2, “a battery-powered concept car with a fully rotating cabin that makes going backwards obsolete, since the driver can turn to face the direction they need to go. The story is here: ... More About: Technology , Obsolete , Futuristic , Sole
Does Sarkozy attack his problems or wait them out?
2007-10-08 18:30:00 It looks like France is in great need of some significant structural changes. That’s not something that would sit well with a people who seem pathologically in love with the status quo. As Time reports in France’s Sarkozy : Honeymoon’s Over: Since the nation returned to work from summer vacations last month, scarcely a day has passed without ... More About: Economics , Problems , Attack
Can the Palestine peace talks do more harm than good?
2007-10-08 18:18:00 Is the Bush Administration playing with fire in preparing for autumn peace talks between Israel and Palestine ? The Arabs are already accusing Secretary of State Rice of not doing her homework, of turning the peace conference “into a ‘photo-op,’ which they believe could backfire against Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and boost his militant rivals in the ... More About: Peace , United States , Good
The lost ?humble? US foreign policy and the swagger of Blackwater
2007-10-07 18:00:00 Not so long ago, the United States was a master in the use of soft power and the light touch: food for famine victims, medicine for sick children, visas for foreign students, radio broadcasts about the wonders of our country, diplomatic missions to beg, cajole and threaten wayward countries back into line. As Lt. Gen. ... More About: Lost , War , Policy , Foreign Policy
US accuses Iran of stoking violence, that?s Iran
2007-10-07 17:38:00 The temerity is breathtaking. Imagine the US accusing Iran of stoking violence in Iraq , as General Paetaeus does here. That’s a shattered Iraq, where upwards of 80% of its citizens want the US occupiers out of there. So who is Petraeus’ talking to? Not to the Iraqis and not to his fellow Americans , 65% of whom ... More About: United States , War , Violence
Bush v. Children: understanding SCHIP
More articles from this author:2007-10-07 17:21:00 This, from The Nation, is a succinct explanation of the issue: Bush v. Children Peter Rothberg The State Children’s Health Insurance Program was created by the federal government in 1997 to provide medical insurance coverage for children of families with annual incomes too large to qualify for Medicaid but too small to afford private insurance. The legislation currently ... More About: United States , SCHIP 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 |
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