Visual Source: Newseum
Nicholas Kristof accurately identifies the greatest threat currently facing America.
IF China or Iran threatened our national credit rating and tried to drive up our interest rates, or if they sought to damage our education system, we would erupt in outrage.
Well, wake up to the national security threat. Only it’s not coming from abroad, but from our own domestic extremists.
In looking at how the Republican's extreme views threaten our national security, Kristof points up something that signals just how idiotically godawful things have become.
It should be a national disgrace that the United States government has eliminated spending for major literacy programs in the last few months, with scarcely a murmur of dissent.
Consider Reading Is Fundamental, a 45-year-old nonprofit program that has cost the federal government only $25 million annually. It’s a public-private partnership with 400,000 volunteers, and it puts books in the hands of low-income children. The program helped four million American children improve their reading skills last year. Now it has lost all federal support.
Dana Milbank reminds you that negotiating with kidnappers only results in more kidnapping.
Twenty Republican lawmakers crowded the Senate TV studio last week to issue a threat: Meet their demands, or they will force the United States to default.
...
This is the language of gangster films: Do as we say — or the girl gets it.
Mark Bittman has given up on the food industry when it comes to putting out a product that's even halfway healthy. He's ready for other parties to take action.
Rather than subsidizing the production of unhealthful foods, we should turn the tables and tax things like soda, French fries, doughnuts and hyperprocessed snacks. The resulting income should be earmarked for a program that encourages a sound diet for Americans by making healthy food more affordable and widely available.
Of course, you could make an argument that such a tax would be regressive, as it would hit hardest at the poor and middle class consumers that are most likely to purchase these products... and that's exactly Bittman's point.
Thomas Friedman says Americans are ready for a third party. You know, one that would have given into Republican demands two years ago. Apparently he's unaware of this little party called "Republicans."
The New York Times warns that the biggest damage to the nuclear industry in the wake of the disaster at Fukushima comes from how industry and government still refuse to be honest with the public.
The industry should have learned after the accident at Three Mile Island that public confidence is fragile. Apparently it has yet to figure that out.
Mark Derr confesses to murder, but not without good reasons.
I knew I had to act, though, when I learned that several neighborhood dogs had died from Bufotoxin.
Reportedly, the humane way to kill a Bufo is to apply a painkiller and then freeze it in a plastic bag, but I did not want to attempt to catch it, because Parkinson’s disease has skewed my balance and dulled my reflexes. I had other plans.
Don't miss this tale of violence, deadly frogs, and cement ponds.
Jennifer Rubin was quick to blame the attack in Norway on Muslims. Now that she knows it was actually a Norwegian behind the attack, she's even more sure that we should watch out for... Muslims.
That the suspect here is a blond Norwegian does not support the proposition that we can rest easy with regard to the panoply of threats we face or that homeland security, intelligence and traditional military can be pruned back. To the contrary, the world remains very dangerous because very bad people will do horrendous things. There are many more jihadists than blond Norwegians out to kill Americans, and we should keep our eye on the systemic and far more potent threats that stem from an ideological war with the West.
Sigh.
Mark Theissen says that the gang of six plan is actually a huge tax increase, because it doesn't start from the position of assuming that the Bush tax cuts will be there forever, and that every other tax break is written in stone, and that, really, people are just going to get new tax breaks every year anyway so you have to think of everything as a tax increase. Even if it's a trillion dollar cut. So there.
You know, after reading both Jennifer Rubin and Mark Theissen, I understand completely how exposure to right wing pundits leads people to do something violent.
With all the tabloids in the news, why do we read tabloids in the first place? Neuroscientist John Hardy may have an answer.
Stripped down, gossip is largely about who is sleeping with who, who would like to sleep with who, and what the local pecking order is in terms of power and influence - which, of course, influences who is sleeping with who.
This explains the purpose of gossip and also the reason for its semi-secrecy and disapproval. In a society where there is competition for mates, it is clearly desirable to know who is available and who is not, who has power and who does not.
Ah, that explains it: Rupert Murdoch, reaching out to the chimp in all of us.