As Naomi Klein illustrates so forcefully in Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, human calamity is great for business, at least in a macro sense. Houses get knocked down by tidal surge? Sales of lumber and nails go up. “Shock and awe” reigns over a decrepit, tin-pot power? The business of contracting “freedom” (and, of…
DetailsDid I hear someone call Rick Perry an idiot? I do believe I did. Do a Google search joining “Rick Perry” and “idiot” and see. Well, listen: You don’t become Texas’ longest-serving governor by being an idiot. The man’s no Rhodes scholar, but that’s no pea beneath his camo cap. When he played to an…
DetailsBefore addressing the legal/semantic mess we’ve built for ourselves, ponder with me an odd quote from Cuba’s Raul Castro. Last week, Castro said he’s willing to discuss a wide range of issues with President Barack Obama — “human rights, freedom of the press, political prisoners, everything.” Maybe an interpreter put words in his mouth. But:…
DetailsAdmittedly, it was early in the morning for a discussion of civics. Who would have known that the subject that would cause hands to shoot up would be bluebonnets? We’d been over several subjects, me and a dozen or so community college freshmen. Each subject might have sparked a reaction. Each was about engaging in…
DetailsI missed last year’s protest. Fox News must not have covered it. Surely it happened. Flag-waving protesters last April packed town squares to denounce out-of-sight deficits and unaccounted-for dollar signs. Surely it happened: an orchestrated national repudiation of a president and his political enablers in Washington. That is, surely it happened last Tax Day, before…
DetailsBig weapons commanded the big letters in the headlines relaying the policy shift in the Pentagon. Defense Secretary Robert Gates would de-emphasize outer-space missile defense in favor of defenses on terra firma. He’d emphasize smaller ships over big ones. He would phase out the F-22 fighter and cancel a $13 billion splurge for a new…
DetailsUh, oh. Here they come with charts, ominous charts — as scary as the times. In lines of red: deficits, crippling deficits, unconscionable deficits, the Obama deficits. The speakers pace back and forth, pointers pecking. And I’m wondering: Where were these birds the same time last year? Likely they were clucking about how the Bush…
DetailsThe appeal from Fargo, N.D., was heartfelt and reverent. A flood threatened to consume a city. Prayers were solicited. The exhortation, however, left one confused. Were we to pray to spare Fargo? Or were we to pray to punish it? Punish it for allowing women to end unwanted pregnancies with a legal medical procedure. Surely,…
DetailsAndrew Dessler is as dispassionate as an academic should be — except about things he knows to be beyond dispute. In the first sentence, first chapter, of The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change, that passion shows through. “Of all the environmental issues that have emerged in the past few decades, global climate change is…
DetailsAddressing the state’s newspaper executives Monday, Rick Perry might have been wearing a coonskin cap and leaning on Ol’ Betsy. Or he could have been Col. Travis drawing a line in the sand. To Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s joust that he’s wrong to turn down half a billion federal dollars in unemployment aid, Perry parried:…
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