I’m wondering how Obama will be blamed for this: Ángel Gurría, head of the O.E.C.D., said ahead of the meeting that the euro-zone countries had to act “very fast.” “It’s not a question of the danger of contagion. Contagion has already happened,” he told Bloomberg television. “This is like Ebola. When you realize you have …
Foreign Affairs
Powerpoint IS Evil
This cracked me up: “PowerPoint makes us stupid,” Gen. James N. Mattis of the Marine Corps, the Joint Forces commander, said this month at a military conference in North Carolina. (He spoke without PowerPoint.) Brig. Gen. H. R. McMaster, who banned PowerPoint presentations when he led the successful effort to secure the northern Iraqi city …
Shades of 2003
Dodd Harris is a good man and wrote a blog that stayed on my blogroll some 3-4 years after it died in the hopes it would restart, but this whole idea of everyone drawing Mohammad as an act of defiance just sounds so warblogger circa 2003-2004. Which isn’t surprising, because the idea started with the …
Supporting the troops
I have no idea if employers really think this way, but this made me sad: “I’ve had veterans tell me they leave their military status off their resume, for fear of the stigma of the invisible wounds of war,” she said at a press conference Tuesday. “How can these heroes … who know how to …
Earth Day in Tehran
From Reuters, via the Washington Post, “Ahmadinejad plans exodus to avert quake disaster”: … Like the people of San Francisco, Tehranis know their sprawling metropolis is due for a massive earthquake. In Iran, where building standards have not advanced as quickly as the population, some estimate millions could be killed or maimed. __ In an …
You’ve Got It Back Asswards
One of the answers to making America healthier isn’t to add more subsidies for farmers markets and the like, it is to simply END the subsidies we’re handing out to big agribusiness and farmers already, particularly grain. And then if you want, go a step farther and stop our foolish sugar policies, and maybe food …
I Can’t Imagine Why There Is Unrest
You try living like this: The neighborhood of Kufr Aqab has evolved into a kind of no man’s land — it’s technically part of Jerusalem, but it lies on the Palestinian side of the West Bank barrier the Israelis have built to try to keep out suicide bombers. Kufr Aqab’s residents have to pay taxes …