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Watch this blog in the coming weeks for a perspective on American politics and culture, the environment, the Middle East, relations with France and other tasty bits of information.

PJ

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The GOP on Fantasy Island After last night's health care speech by President Obama to a joint session of Congress there could be little doubt: Barak Obama is a man for all seasons. I was prepared to roll out the cannons and take aim at an administration that has essentially allowed right-wing hooligans to define the debate on health care for the entire nation. At the end of what was certainly one of the most moving speeches of his presidency, Mr. Obama had managed to solidify his base, keep an open door to bi-partisanship, and leave even his ideological enemies somewhat in awe. One enemy clearly not in awe was the South Carolina congressman Joe Wilson who blatantly broke the traditions of congressional decorum by yelling at the president, calling him a liar in the middle of his speech. The contrast between the calm intelligence of Obama and the maniacal behavior of the representative was stark and will surely be the subject of national discussion in the coming days. There is little...
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The Redistributor in Chief It is certainly an embarrassment. The ease with which John McCain and his team have elicited jeers from his supporters at the mention of “sharing the wealth” is an apt indicator of the brain damage sustained by a certain portion of the American populace over the years. With its roots in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 50s, the McCain campaign has pushed the buttons of the Cold War, tarring Barak Obama as a “socialist” for advocating what has been a part of the American landscape since 1903: the graduated income tax that places a larger tax burden on citizens with greater wealth. After enduring years of Bush administration policies that effectively transferred inordinate amounts of the nation’s wealth to those already wealthy, after witnessing the handover of $700 billion in a bailout of investment bankers and Wall Street manipulators, after seeing the loss of millions of jobs and the foreclosure of millions of homes, one would think that the great majorit...
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New Years Thoughts

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Yes, I know. In reality it is all arbitrary, this New Years crap. It's a new year every moment, depending upon where you start from. This linear time thing just provokes more questions, for which there are no apparent answers, yet we still persist in asking them because... that is what we must do. My wife and son are in the next room singing songs in Basque, a language that has no apparent antecedent, from a people whose origins are unknown, a bloodline that apparently runs as an ancient tangent to the rest of what we call the human race. So we continue on in the world of what is apparent, with joy and trembling at the wonder of it all.
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