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. […]
Pierre Tristam
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.