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'Intercontinental Ballistic Microfinance': A Wonderful Visualization
Kiva is an organization that matches lenders, mainly in rich countries, with microfinance organizations and entrepreneurs and students mainly in poor countries. Several of its organizers have posted a...
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Sustainable Security, for People of All Races
In three previous installments -- first, second, and third -- readers have discussed the implications of a recent case in which a Boston-area musician, Vance Gilbert, caused an airline crew to panic...
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A Harsh Case Against Obama (and His Opponents)
Without comment or framing, let me pass along this video from the "Joe Mason for President" campaign, up recently on YouTube. I have no idea how "real" this effort is, and it sends some contradictory...
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On Remaining Sane in the Face of Terrorism
The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg has written recently to criticize attempts by John Mueller and others to put terrorist attacks "into perspective." Mueller has compared the number of people killed in...
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'People Don't Realize How Fragile Democracy Really Is'
Two days ago I mentioned the "Goodbye to All That" essay by Mike Lofgren, a respected (including by me) veteran Congressional staffer who had worked for Republican legislators on defense and budget...
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How I Know I Am Traveling Outside the United States
I turn on CNN and, instead of Anderson Cooper, I see: Eye On Mongolia! A word from our sponsor, via the CNN site, at right. Actually it's a very interesting show. The segment on Mongolian "throat...
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I Wonder If President Obama Really Believes This
Read the two bits of testimony by Congressional staffers -- one Republican, one Democratic -- about the nihilist freefire zone that is the modern Congress. Then consider President Obama's Labor Day...
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'People Are Close to Revolt'
Yesterday I quoted a long-time Congressional staffer -- one involuntarily retired by the mid-term results in 2010 -- who ratified previous comments about the Republican-led nihilism of the Congress and...
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Why I Think Rick Perry Did Not Help Himself
1) Ponzi scheme, as shown the exchange below with Romney over Social Security. Romney is already in "running as the party's nominee rather than for the Tea Party vote in South Carolina" mode. Perry is...
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On the Tone and Structure of the Obama Jobs Speech
1) In his appraisal, the Atlantic's Chris Good said that the speech's refrain -- pass this jobs bill; you should pass it right away --Â amounted to a kind of begging to Congress. That may be the...
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On Gov. Perry and Galileo
On reflection, and in response to a torrent of near- identically phrased outraged mail: I shouldn't have called Gov. Rick Perry's reference to Galileo during this week's Republican debate "flat-out...
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Why 'Infrastructure' Should Be Sexy: Lessons from Uganda, Russia, and China
I mentioned yesterday that the passage I liked best from Obama's "pass the jobs bill / pass it right away" speech was his discourse on "infrastructure." Yes, that most boring of words, which applies to...
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'People Are Close to Revolt': Views From Afar
Three days ago -- just before the Republican debate in California and then the President's speech on jobs, jobs, jobs -- I quoted Congressional staffers on the increasing, cynical destruction of the...
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On the Winsome Sexiness of Infrastructure, and the F-150 Theory of American...
Following this previous dispatch on why boring old "infrastructure" is what distinguishes a successful country from a failing one:1) A chart showing changes in U.S. infrastructure investment. Ignore...
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Flying While Half-Arab (and Half-Jewish). This One Is Shocking.
You may have seen the matter-of-fact reports yesterday about extra security sensitivity on the airlines, because of the tenth anniversary of 9/11. For instance, this is the entirety of a NYT...
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More on Flying While Half-Arab
In response to the previous item about the three "suspicious" non-white people who were handcuffed and hustled off a plane by heavily armed security forces, because their appearance aroused...
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Just a Little More on Flying While Non-White
This episode -- in which three absolutely innocent people, two of them Indian men and one a Saudi/Jewish American woman, were taken off a plane, in handcuffs, by heavily armed security forces because...
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An Airline Captain, Plus the Germans, on Flying While Brown
1) From a captain at a U.S. airline:>>Let me first say that I was appalled by the Frontier Airlines situation that happened on 9/11. I am a captain at a major US airline and I just thought I'd...
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New Arrival: The Atlantic Cities
Please check out our new sister site. Very interesting and well done. For explanations of the premise and ambitions, see comments by the Atlantic.com's editor, Bob Cohn, and the Cities site's editor,...
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A Practical Question From Someone Who Must Fly While Brown
I won't string this out indefinitely, but: a lot of mail I've received in the past few days (about the Frontier Airlines fiasco) has been from people with names like Krishna, Sanjay, Vijay, Nikhil,...
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