The Question No One Asks
Given that we all want health and spend trillions to "care" for it, it's sobering how little thought we give to its true meaning.
The president, though a dedicated student of history, has failed to learn the lesson of our nation's most significant political confrontations: they've required single-minded determination and the willingness to battle entrenched opponents until the fight was won. Look at the way FDR handled the fight over Social Security. Despite stiff opposition from within his own party, he vowed to veto any legislation that undermined Social Security's core principles. Speaking of the entrenched interests arrayed against him, FDR said, "They are unanimous in their hate for me -- and I welcome their hatred." Obama, on the other hand, welcomes these entrenched interests into the Oval Office and invites them to amputate another limb off health care reform and dump it in the garbage on the way out.
Given that we all want health and spend trillions to "care" for it, it's sobering how little thought we give to its true meaning.
We ignore Africa at our peril. The African continent will only become more important in the future, and the whole world has a stake in what happens there.
How should Japan maintain its political and economic independence and protect its national interest when caught between the U.S., which is fighting to retain its position as the world's dominant power, and China, which is seeking ways to become dominant?
If you'd have asked me three months ago whether Bernanke would be confirmed, I'd have said no. Congress (and much of the public) is still furious about the bank bailouts, as well they should be.
Obama's administration announced the creation of an elite inter-agency interrogation team to handle captured high-level intelligence targets.
The complaints directed at Canada's health care system about waiting times for treatment are without foundation. My experience -- I was treated for a brain tumor in 2004 -- says quite the opposite.
Obama's handling of the CIA's report on torture may be the last chance he has to find his way back to Grant Park.
What we're seeing from the health care town halls and what we've seen from the "birthers" is essentially what I call the Tyranny of the Tantrum, which many parents encounter during the "terrible twos."
On September 18 of last year, the U.S. was literally hours away from a financial meltdown. Bernanke was instrumental in preventing it. He should be appointed for another term.
As the 'Lockerbie bomber' suns himself amid cheers in Tripoli, an examination of the outcomes of other cases of terrorism against Americans over the last century yields its own pattern of disappointments.
In the days after Jackson's death, I was contacted by many who were close to him throughout his life. "They killed him," they would say to me. But who were "they?" And what did they stand to gain from his death?
In the Clinton White House, we fought for the most progressive budget bill since 1965. And we did it without a single Republican vote. We are now on the verge of a much greater achievement.
The U.S. has an enormous military, political, and economic presence in Afghanistan, trying to bring Afghans the kind of government against which Americans have been screaming in so-called towns meetings.
At last, one of the great misnomers of public disinformation bordering closer to brainwashing has been brought to heel.
Almost one in five women seeking infertility treatments are over 40 and two-thirds will not be able to get pregnant on their own.
There is the fantasy that during an interview, a celebrity will totally spark with you and you will become BFFs and/or lovers, and the interview will just fly because you are having so much fun. No.
Black love is alive and well in my day-to-day life, though I realize that the macro picture isn't as pretty.
If we don't change why we are unhealthy, not only are we unlikely to secure better medical outcomes, but it will probably bankrupt us too.