Politics of Delay and Confuse versus Trust Me

As the Senate moves slowly towards a Health Care Reform bill, I am struck by the display of politics based upon “delay and confuse” versus “trust me”. In fact there is no basis for either position. Republicans are simply irresponsible and/or cruel to keep up their campaign to confuse Americans about what might happen and [...]

Public Option Option?

The reports in today’s newspapers are that Maine Senator Olympia Snow’s proposal that the Health Care Reform bill contain “an option” that under certain conditions would call for the creation of a Medicare like public option. The “certain conditions” would refer to private insurers controlling yearly premium increases. Is this the basis for compromise? On [...]

Graham Says Stay

Senator Lindsay Graham, in an interview over the weekend, sternly advised President Obama that the US must not only stay in Afghanistan but must insure that the Taliban does not win. He told anyone who had been sleeping for the last 8 years that if US forces left Afghanistan, the Taliban would surely return to [...]

Where’s The Shame?

Obama Administration officials are saying that the deadline to close Guantanamo Detention Facility will not be met. The reason given was that there was not enough time to complete a careful review of each case. What do they think we are smoking? Almost all the detainees have been in Guantanamo (or detention someplace) for over [...]

A Year Later

The current discussions swirling around whether the US should increase its Afghanistan military presence, stand pat, or reduce troop strength is in itself a refreshing example of good governance. It is an important strategic and foreign policy decision. On one side of Afghanistan is Iran. They are experiencing internal difficulties within their ruling faction.   [...]

Socialism!

Yesterday I heard someone says with much disdain for unnamed others, that America was now going socialist.  Our Government had gone way over the line when it bailed out Wall Street and when it did the same for General Motors and Chrysler. With the public options staring at us (read socialized medicine), should there be [...]

Public Option

A survey of the modern, industrialized world does not yield the “single payer” health care system as the only effective one. In Germany and France, for example, private insurance competes right along side of Government plans quite well. So what is the big deal being made here in the US? To begin with in the [...]

One Battle Too Many?

President Obama met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas yesterday. There were few smiles and the meeting was short and seemingly unproductive. That outcome was predictable. The Israeli position is hopelessly truncated due to internal religious based political pandering. You know commonsense will be absent when the Israeli Government listens [...]

Afghanis-stay?

President Obama is looking at a very difficult decision over whether to increase American military strength in Afghanistan knowing full well he will be going alone in terms of NATO Country participation. With the lessons of Vietnam still fresh in Americans’ memories, following that path into a quagmire is not very attractive. But Afghanistan is [...]

Banking Reforms

Senator Chris Dodd who is chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, and upon whose watch the implosion of the banking and investment sectors began, has introduced a bill to revise the way this sector is regulated. In the business world when things go not the way you want, many CEOs (and most weak ones) announce [...]