conscience of a progressive mindful observations on policy, policy-makers and political punks

This week, we’ve been treated to the sight of two of the more notorious con men in our nation’s recent harmonizing on the favorite theme of malefactors and miscreants – ‘blame the system’. Madoff has been in the news for carping about how the responsibility for the guilt and anxiety he suffered duri

Fresh from watching ABC’s This Week with Christiane Amanpour , generally the class act of the Sunday AM talking heads shows, which broadcast live from Cairo this week. She had an excellent group of US and Egyptian journalists for her round table discussion, who talked about just about every conceiva

In response to: Bigger Is Not Always Bad New York Times | December 8, 2010 Where to start! This is a horrible piece of rhetoric…it doesn’t even qualify as a serious analysis of the problem. I would hope that Professor Rajan has higher standards for his students than is reflected in this painfully tr

In response to: President Obama Lands in Afghanistan for Unannounced Visit New York Times | December 3, 2010 If the focus of the trip is as described in this piece, it is yet another tragically wrong-headed blunder on the part of our feckless president. Karzai needs to be read the riot act at a mini

So, I’ve had a number of reactions floating around in my  head relative to the whole WikiLeaks brouhaha. In no particular order: Much of what has been revealed was only “news” because the state-of-the art of journalistic practice has degenerated into note-taking at staged press events and repackagin

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find it immensely frustrating that a week or so after being kicked in the teeth by the South Koreans on a trade deal, we’re now on the cusp of being drawn into spending billions of dollars and risking American lives to save their asses from [...]

One of the more interesting statistics that has caught my attention recently is the fact that Ayn Rand’s notorious opus ‘Atlas Shrugged’ has steadily climbed Amazon’s bestseller list since the start of the financial crisis; as I write this it’s #36 on their literature list. Setting aside the fact th