Matt Yglesias has some interesting observations regarding parallels between Vietnam and Iraq: The good news is that it’s hard to see US casualties — and especially US fatalities — getting anywhere near the levels reached in Vietnam. On just about every other front, however, we’ve made a bigger mistake — even if we manage to […]
Month: September 2004
Each and every day during my morning electronic stroll, I check in at icasualties.org, a service that compiles its data from DoD reports, to see how many Americans the adventure in Iraq has killed th
Is back in style! Did it ever go out? Atrios’ analysis is entirely accurate: For those who may not remember, Laffer was the guy who scribbled what became known as the “Laffer curve”
Exhibit A on why charter schools are a bad idea: It had been a month since one of the nation’s largest charter school operators collapsed, leaving 6,000 students with no school to attend this fall. The businessman who used $100 million in state financing to build an empire of 60 mostly storefront schools had simply […]
Via Kos, John Zogby makes a compelling argument that telephone polling, as we know it, is obsolete: Zogby points out that you don’t know in which area code the cell phone user lives. Nor do you
On the other hand, this article reminds me of perhaps the most indefensible policy that most progressives either agree with or are indifferent about: the criminalization of prostitution. This isnR
Unlike Matt Yglesias, I can’t say I’m a libertarian per se even one minute of the day. Being a Canadian, even at my most libertarianish phase of adolescence I supported socialized medicine. I do have libertarian positions on a number of issues, though, so it is in a way a part of my political makeup (indeed, […]
I know, I know, we’re not supposed to panic. 6+ weeks to go, debates, etc. But I’m going to panic a little anyway, in response to the SUSA New Jersey, Florida and Illinois polls, and theÂ
I’m touched by Paul Wolfowitz’ expression of concern for Indonesian democracy. One of his friends, it seems, is being unjustly persecuted by the Indonesian government. He relates the tale
Doug Muir has an excellent post at Tacitus.org about German occupation policies in Yugoslavia between 1941 and 1944. He draws a number of interesting parallels between the German situation and the American, as well as several contrasts. This was effective. By the middle of 1944, the partisans held about a quarter of the country, and had […]
Jesse Taylor points out: Missile defense is not a bad idea…in the abstract. Defending oneself from missiles, after all, was the basis of a seminal videogame in the 1980s, which made the point th
Via Kevin Drum, Robert Kagan on Russia: A great deal is riding on whether President Bush can muster the will to denounce the man he has regarded as an ally in the war on terrorism. Some will argue,