The Boxer-Isakson "Israel Support Letter" [.pdf] addressed to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and currently signed by 76 senators [.pdf] answers a question no one needed to ask: Does the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have the support of the United States Senate? However, unlike the proverbial napkin former AIPAC bigwig Steven Rosen boasted …
Continue reading “Israel Support Letter Unsupported by Reality”
There are certainly many gut-wrenching scenes in the "Collateral Murder" Wikileaks video currently making huge waves on the internet. Though even the hardcore U.S. military apologentsia are having a (relatively) hard time justifying the slaughter of the unarmed men who arrived on the scene of the initial massacre in a black van to evacuate a …
Continue reading “Bringing a Battle to Their Kids”
The recent frenzy over "balloon boy" Falcon Heene that dominated cable news was odd, considering the scant coverage of the carnage wreaked by another kind of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The balloon incident involved a 6-year-old boy who was thought to be inside a homemade contraption that came unmoored and flew unguided for 70 miles …
Continue reading “A Tale of Two UAVs”
The United States is insolvent, says Jay Barr.
As Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman "crossed party lines" from War Party-D to War Party-R at the Republican National Convention Tuesday night, he exemplified the only kind of bipartisanship found in Congress since 2001: reaching across the aisle to hand a neoconservative pseudo-Republican whatever he wants. His speech was remarkable, though, in that the words "Iran" …
Continue reading “Cherry-picking from Washington’s Tree”
Before we declare the occupation of Iraq a success, nuke Iran, and/or barge into Pakistan, it might be wise to take a deep breath and think logically about some of the pressing issues of the day. Whether you come down on the side of non-interventionism and the reality-based community (RBC) or the side of the …
Continue reading “A Surge in Logic”
The twenty-first century has already had its share of "fuzzy math," and the following are five examples of ideas that do not hold up to logical analysis. 1. You Break It = You Bought It Colin Powell is said to have famously introduced this fatally flawed analogy. This, along with a couple other accomplishments, appears …
Continue reading “Trouble at the Pottery Barn”
It is no stretch to say there is a great deal of backward thinking in Washington, D.C., but maybe there should be just a little more. Instead of making a plan that will maybe, possibly, hopefully, by some chance bring about victory, it is useful to start at the end and work our way back …
Continue reading “Backward Thinking” 
