The underlying strategy here is all too familiar: Instead of challenging popular liberal programs directly, the Republicans are creating fiscal conditions that make those programs unsustainable. In 1981 the Reagan administration slashed taxes, deliberately intending — as Ronald Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, later disclosed — to starve the federal government of funds, force reductions [...]
This Op-Ed in the Taipei Times shows how little regard Taiwan grants to the work of the (mostly female) nursing staff who are the front line of defense against SARS: To show the Cabinet’s appreciation for medical staff treating SARS patients, Premier Yu Shyi-kun announced on April 27 that each doctor treating SARS patients would [...]
Here is a much better explanation, from the Washington Post, of the research that shows the cat-SARS link: The long-sought discovery came when a team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong and the Chinese government tested 25 animals from eight species being sold at a live animal market in the province of Guangdong, [...]
Gary Heart has some interesting things to say about America’s transition to Empire. Of course, it all depends on whether you see what is happening now as something new, but Heart’s remarks are interesting simply because of his desire to enter into the national debate from such a critical perspective: It is not in the [...]
It seems that Bloglet (the service I’ve been using to send out the e-mail version of this blog) has simply stopped working. Customer service used to be good about a year ago, but now I never get replies to my queries. I’ve manually disabled that service and re-activated the Yahoo Groups list. So everyone should [...]
Personally, I don’t buy this BBC Story which claims that SARS may have come from a type of cat eaten as a delicacy in Guangdong province. True, the Chinese have a saying that “The people in Canton province will eat anything with four legs except a table and anything with wings except an airplane.” And [...]
Surprise, surprise: The TV networks that will benefit from the new FCC rules on media ownership have been keeping their viewers in the dark about the changes. … to date, most network and cable news operations have all but ignored the story; a story their parent companies have taken extraordinary interest in and spent millions [...]
Another article on the Lynch “rescue” story: Sadly, almost nothing fed to reporters about either Lynch’s original capture by Iraqi forces or her “rescue” by U.S. forces turns out to be true. Although some are trying to cast aspersions on the BBC report. Seems that the issue of the “blanks” is really secondary to the [...]
Looks like the Department of Homeland Defense’s color-coding scheme to alert the nation to danger from terrorist attacks is reactive rather than predictive. According to this chart, it has gone to “High” only after major terrorist attacks, never before… Which seems to support my theory that its main purpose is to scare the nation into [...]
I don’t publish much about the environment on this blog – I guess because protection seems like such an obvious good and the government’s policies are so obviously bad that it seems to require little comment. However this article about Christie Whitman’s resignation is worth reading: Christie Whitman’s resignation Wednesday as chief of the Environmental [...]