For all the missteps, for all of Obama’s prevarications and defanged tactics, the end result will (should the bill pass) vindicate whatever he did, however he did it. What was bound to be a colossal battle turned out to unravel the worst and little of the best about America.
Initial Unemployment Claims Up 17,000
Weekly unemployment claims are up 17,000 from the previous week’s unrevised figure of 457,000. The 4-week moving average was 473,750, a decrease of 7,750 from the previous week.
Rev-Up Time for the Flagler Youth Orchestra
They’re practicing as I’m writing–the Flagler Youth Orchestra’s four music teachers (Jonathan May, Jack Jeffe, Justin McCulough and Linda VavBuren–in preparation for tonight’s inaugural concert of the new season: the quartet is putting on a few pieces of its own for the occasion, including, from what I hear, a Christmassy jaunt or two. It’s barely […]
Soldiers, Kids Reunite, but Cameras Exploit
In one video, Army Master Sgt. Joseph Myers walks unannounced into his 10-year-old daughter Hanna’s classroom in Texas after a long deployment. In split seconds Hanna’s expression goes from blank to shock to joy to meltdown. She barely manages to make it toward her father’s embrace. In another, at a Jacksonville Jaguars football game last […]
Paige Dalporto’s Latest Disillusions
To describe himself, West Virginia’s T. Paige Dalporto evokes a hollow tunnel carving his veins somewhere around the dirty tracks of his disillusions. Here he is singing his latest.
Forget Obama’s. What About Sadie’s Vietnam?
Sadie’s relationship with Vietnam was a complete surprise. But it explains an adolescence rife with post-traumatic stress disorder and reenactments of napping through napalm.
Unemployment: 10.2%. Corporate Profits: Up 10.6%
Corporate profits, which logged some record-breaking soars during the Bush years, are back to their not-so-old form, outgunning the unemployment rate.
The Twisted Reality of War’s Homecoming Videos
Soldiers’ “surprise” homecomings are the new voyeurism, and soldiers’ children and wives the most exploited victims.
South of the Border, Where Drug Policy Makes Sense
On Aug. 20, Mexico for a few days became the most enlightened nation in the western hemisphere regarding drug policy. That day, a law took effect decriminalizing possession of small quantities of drugs. All drugs. South of the border you can carry up to 5 grams of marijuana (four joints’ worth), half a gram of […]
Nuclear’s Glowing, False New Dawn
Besides radioactive waste with nowhere to go, the nuclear power industry is releasing a rich array of glowing falsehoods about the supposed promise of nuclear power.
Prejudice Guides Speculation Over Fort Hood Killings
Even in the United States, land of diversity and individualism, there’s still nothing like race and ancestry to imprison you in other people’s dumbest assumptions and cruelest distortions. An American – American-born, American-bred, American-educated – is suspected of having committed the mass killing that resulted in the death of 13 people at Fort Hood on […]
“60 Minutes”‘ $60 Billion Lie About Medicare
I haven’t watched CBS’ “60 Minutes” in years. But it was one of those stories that stops you in your tracks: Medicare fraud is “a $60 billion crime.” Medicare is the $456 billion government health insurance program serving 46 million elderly Americans. Its credibility as a government-run program is at the heart of the health-care […]
Quit Dithering: Let Them Ask and Tell
Any soldier’s morale faint enough to be affected by a fellow-soldier’s sexual inclination is a warning that that soldier’s fibers may not be worth the fatigues he’s wearing. Homophobia, not homosexuality, is the sickness in the deal.
‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Try to Survive Crushing Stones
The dishonor is the nation’s tolerance of a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy no less offensive than segregation-era racism – or current-era worship of “diversity,” which stops at sexual preference.
Health Reform Nears Universal Coverage – Of Insurers
When Congress haggled five years ago over the prescription-drug benefit portion of Medicare, the government health-insurance program for the elderly, cost projections of the new benefit ranged from $400 billion to $720 billion over 10 years. Congress had not one penny in dedicated revenue to pay for it. Whatever the cost, it would all be […]
Locked and Loaded for Dignity Deserved but Withheld
There was the case of Milissa Holland, the Flagler County commissioner, who in June accused 81-year-old John Petyo of Palm Coast of making death threats. Petyo has a recent history of trespassing and mental-health issues. There was the case of 82-year-old Antonino Milian of Deltona, who in August was found dead in the woods of […]
Holes Still Scar Landscape from New York to Afghanistan
Terrorists dug the first eight years ago in Lower Manhattan. The hole is still there, visible live on Web cams keeping track of the crater’s make-work traffic. It was seven years from the time the design for the Twin Towers was unveiled in 1964 to the day the second building was topped out on a […]
CIA Fails Mission to Detect Danger
Franz Kafka’s “Trial” is the story of a nobody tried for crimes never made clear by faceless authorities upholding secret laws that never fail to get their guilty verdict. You could read it to understand how easily reality is distorted and justice impersonated, even in “civilized” nations. Or you could read the inspector general’s recent […]
‘Deadliest Catch’ a Cowboy Race to Cap-and-Trade
The Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” is a reality series based on the toil and tyranny of crab fishing in the Bering Sea. About 4 million people watch the show every week, making it one of the top-rated programs on cable. It’s a strange phenomenon, considering that it’s just watching people work. But it’s more than […]
Stoking Rage from Manipulated Fears
You remember the e-mails five years ago. They were all the same, junking up our in-boxes with bullet lists of how great things were going in Iraq – the exact number of new schools built, the number of Iraqis happily employed, the number of cell phones beeping everywhere (including, presumably, those used to detonate roadside […]
Atop a Decapitated Peak with Hoot
Mountain-top removal coal mining in West Virginia: the grinding tragedy of Kayford Mountain, where Massey Energy has been removing mountaintops to dig out coal.
Hoards of Wealth but No Will to Tax
Empires rise and fall on the strength of their kitty, not their guns. Spain in the 17th century, France in the 18th, Britain in the 19th – they each went bankrupt, exhausted from debt. With unsustainable trillion-dollar deficits projected through the next decade, is the United States going the way of its European forebears? If […]
Scholar’s Arrest Illustrates Harm of Police Overzealousness
The New Yorker’s Steve Coll was on assignment in Nigeria recently, dining alone “over spicy rice and cold beer” and entertaining himself with the letters to the editor in a local paper. One in particular, which Coll reproduced in his blog, recounts a man’s absurd run-in with cops. The man was carrying a bag. The […]
Universal Health Care Closer than a Moon Shot for U.S.
Here’s a good way to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Moon landing: Exceed that achievement with one of greater value. Going to Mars would be nice. Getting universal health care would be cheaper. It would do more good to millions of people than expeditions to outer worlds to pick up rocks and plant flags. […]
Obama Follows Precedent, Undermining Iran with Engagement
COMBATTING TYRANNY A twitter is a terrible thing to waste. Tweeting his brains out over Iran in the last few days, Marco Rubio, the former speaker of the Florida House of Representatives and current candidate for U.S. Senate, had a “feeling” that “the situation in Iran would be a little different if they had a […]
Obama the Collaborator Letting Naysayers Neuter Health-Care Fix
There is no health-care debate in the United States. There’s not even a debate over principles. You’d think a nation intent on overhauling a broken system that presidents going back to Harry Truman have been trying to fix would want to openly discuss what it wants – universal care? Single-payer? A private-public combination? Nationalized insurance? […]
Satisfaction at GM Dealership – Irony, Spiders and All
Last week, GM went bankrupt. Naturally, my wife, Cheryl, and I went to a GM dealership and bought a car. Her Buick was acting up. Strange sounds, twittery squeaks, leaks all over. We took it to the dealership for a look. It turned into a $2,700 sentence, before tax. I couldn’t tell you why. Mechanics […]
Devaluing Journalists Who Dig for Truth in War Zone
[Or. pub date: Sept. 20, 2009] You’d think reporters were a lower life form. And I’m not referring to the way bean-counters are exterminating them out of newsrooms. Stephen Farrell is a New York Times reporter posted in Afghanistan. On Sept. 5, Taliban forces kidnapped him and his Afghan interpreter, Sultan Munadi, who’s also a […]
Immigration’s Tale from New York’s #7 Subway Train
In New York, the story of immigration’s present and foreseeable future is on the “Immigrant Express,” the No. 7 subway line that crosses Queens, the country’s single-most diverse county (46.1 percent of its residents were born abroad).
The Many Deaths of Pat Tillman
Dirty wars make for dirty stories. Tillman’s is one of them for the way the Army and Gen. McChrystal covered up his death by “friendly fire” then whitewashed investigation after investigation.
V.S. Naipaul’s Nobel
Naipaul’s reputation has been growing as much for being the Susan Lucci of laureates as for publishing stories, plotless novels and journalistic travelogues at dependable intervals since 1957.