Friday night I attended a town hall meeting on the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) in Bethesda, MD. The TPP is:
a proposed regional regulatory and investment treaty. As of 2014, twelve countries throughout the Asia-Pacific region have participated in negotiations on the TPP: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.
At SlateWilliam Saletan has long defended drone warfare because it minimizes both civilian and military casualties. Drone are preferable, certainly, to high altitude bombing. From the U.S. military perspective, only the equipment is at risk. From the perspective of civilians, drone strikes are more carefully targeted than bombs from 50,000 feet or cruise missiles launched from hundreds of miles away.
By Doctor Cleveland on Fri, 04/24/2015 - 3:28pm | Arts & Entertainment, Media
You may have seen newsstories, timed for Shakespeare's more-or-less birthday, claiming that top American colleges have stopped requiring Shakespeare. This is not news (nothing about college requirements has changed lately), and not really true.
The debate over whether to continue the refusal to expand Medicaid or go to Washington with a program proposal has caused a split in the Republicans in Tallahassee. They are now facing a budgetary crises because LIP (Low Income Pool) a grant to help cover the cost of healthcare for the uninsured will expire June 30. The State of Florida was told a year ago by the CMS that this funding would expire but Rick Scott included it in the budget for this year.
When I was at Forbes I learned that the American Stock Exchange, once known as "the curb," also had the nickname, "The Scam-ex." This was where people bought and sold shares of subprime public companies and where insiders and bucket shops conducted pump and dump scams on retail investors.
It's Marathon Monday in Boston, the second Marathon since the bombing. A Massachusetts jury is currently deciding whether the surviving bomber should serve life in prison or be executed, but that jury will not meet today, because it is a holiday. Today is Patriot's Day.
By HSG on Sun, 04/19/2015 - 8:20pm | Women's issues
According to Washington Post book reviewer Joanna Scutts, anthropologist Melvin Konner argues in Women After All that we can look forward to a peaceful future because women will increasingly mate with "caring, committed partners" rather than "feckless brutes".
At least three assumptions underlie Konner's conclusion: 1) Going forward, young women will have a greater degree of agency when it comes to selecting reproductive mates. 2) Women with agency will choose caring unassuming mates. 3) The offspring of gentle empathic men will be gentle and empathic. While the truth of each assumption may be questioned, this post briefly examines the second and finds it dubious.
Presuming this all goes as (un)planned and coal/oil/gas can mostly be phased out, it begs some interesting questions, what with nearly limitless almost-free energy (& electric cars, super-grids & presumably electric planes to go along with it)
1) what happens to our global warming concerns as we replace fossil fuels with non-CO2 & non-heat producing alternatives?
Regarding the Senate committee's unanimous vote yesterday to "condition the President's power" on negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran, I was irate before I had my coffee, on the fence during breakfast, and surprisingly I now have decided not to allow perceived insults to the President ruin my day. I'm not gloriously happy, but I'm o.k with with the unanimous vote.
For married-with-children New York suburbanites in the 1970s and 80s, nothing spelled success like a Mercedes S-Class Sedan in the driveway. After the big promotion, hot shot investment bankers, law firm partners, and ad agency execs headed over to Mercedes-Benz of Greenwich. There they handed Hans a fat check and the keys to the family's now superfluous Gran Torino before cruising back to Scarsdale or Darien in 450 SEL splendor.
I first formed an opinion about Scott Ritter in the early 90s based on some network’s clip showing him--then a UN arms inspector--arguing with some of his Iraqi contacts. Poorly... Fitting every part of the role of the Ugly American.
Some years later he spoke at some local hall and I went. In the flesh he was an improvement.
That was the last I thought about him until the Huffington Post last week headlined those comments of his on Lausanne which I linked to in Caviar anyone? I recommend taking a look at that link. Whichever side you’re on, Ritter raises issues which should be dealt with although he himself, like me, seems pro Lausanne.
It's been a while, but here I am. Illnesses and the vagaries of the gypsy life have taken a toll, frazzled my brain, and, if you can believe it, have led me to thinking about things other than the state of the nation. During my enforced R&R I read a few novels, watched a few movies, spent time with friends, marveled at scenery, and all-around de-fragged. I hung around on the edges of the political debates, but found myself thinking the unthinkable: "Who cares?"
Now I'm back.
So. . .
What the devil has gotten into those Republicans? Are there no grownups left in that party? It's as if, this past January, they all just got out of juvie, where they were plotting their mischief, and now's the time to put their malicious but childishly goofy plans into action.
None of this stuff going on right now is about religious freedom. It's about fundamentalist Christians wanting to shove THEIR religion down the throats of everyone else.
I haven't heard a SINGLE SOLITARY Christian leader come out and say how wrong it was for the country to basically FORCE Mormons to abandon polygamy, even though it was a basic tenant of their religion from the get-go.
I haven't heard a SINGLE SOLITARY Christian leader come out and say that the Muslims should be able to practice Sharia Law, according to their religion.
"In truth, laws are always useful to those with possessions and harmful to those who have nothing; from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all possess something."
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are available to any American who doesn't suffer from that incurable disease called "otherness". There's a Dimension of personal belief that spills into the public sector; this belief has the ability to circumvent the rights of others. The lack of equality the homosexual community face is a direct reflection of the way our society has always handled radical alterity. The right to engage in commerce or have a marriage that's recognized by the sovereign is a right many (in this free country) have fought and some died for, yet the progress made in some states is being negated by the regressive policies of other states: Indiana and Arkansas.
You heard, during the last campaign, that 47% of Americans "don't pay taxes," by which we mean Federal Income taxes (they pay many others at all levels of government). It has somehow been difficult to convince people that 47% of the population does not actually make enough money that they can be taxed in any meaningful way but at a median income of $50,000 a year and long-term, inflation-adjusted wage stagnation, I've always suspected it's true. From The Big Picture, some further evidence:
I read something about fear a few years ago that resonated with me: neurologically, fear and anger have very similar effects on the human body. I read this in prison; it gave me pause: most of the people I knew who were in prison for murder weren't stereotypical gangsters or psychopaths. I thought long and hard about the stories I'd heard over the years and most of them were rooted in fear not anger. I decided that I would do everything in my power to avoid appearing intimidating or threatening.
Indiana Governor Mike Pence is shocked—shocked—that people see anything objectionable in Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. “Was I expecting this kind of backlash?” he exclaimed, “Heavens no.”
The debate over whether to continue the refusal to expand Medicaid or go to Washington with a program proposal has caused a split in the Republicans in Tallahassee. They are now facing a budgetary crises because LIP (Low Income Pool) a grant to help cover the cost of healthcare for the uninsured will expire June 30. The State of Florida was told a year ago by the CMS that this funding would expire but Rick Scott included it in the budget for this year. 
