NPCT

Today I found an interesting annotated history of world oil prices.

Slate discusses comments from a former Bush administration insider. Here’s a quote from him:

[T]he case that I saw for four-plus years was a case that I have never seen in my study of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process. What I saw was a cabal between [...]

Haven’t written in a while, but here is a fantastic nonpartisan discussion of the Valerie Plame case:

There is an explicit and implicit contract between the United States and its NOCs. It has many parts, but there is one fundamental part: A NOC will never reveal that he is or was a NOC without special permission. [...]

Here is an article pointing out that this eventuality was well-known and that the levees had not been repaired because of the Bush Administration’s other priorities: Iraq and tax cuts.

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working [...]

If the product ain’t selling, just change the slogan. Hey, it worked for Pepsi, why not an ill-conceived military operation?
In case you hadn’t heard about the latest brainchild of the White House propaganda agency, this one’s a winner. I don’t think I could sum things up any better than Fred Kaplan does [...]

If World War Two had been an online Real Time Strategy game, the chat room traffic would have gone something like this.

It looks like the traitor is… Karl Rove.

If you’re like me, you might’ve been wondering what the Bush Administration intends to do with all of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay, who have access neither to the civil or military court system. Well, they finally have an answer: lifetime detainment. The Department of Defense has asked for $25M to build a [...]

In the US, the news media only reports American fatalities (they don’t even report American casualties). I certainly would never want to trivialize the deaths of our servicemen - my own brother is in the Navy - but it is worth remembering that there are many more deaths in Iraq than just Americans. [...]

Before I go into detail about all the things I liked about this book, I should say up front that I thought the writing style was pretty annoying, perhaps even juvenile. The author tries to fit every possible metaphor he can come up with into the book, at every structural level. This results [...]

Last week I finished reading a book called The Haj by Leon Uris. I have still not decided what to think about it. In the title, the word “haj” does not refer to the pilgrimage to Mecca directly, but rather to an individual, a leader of a Palestinian village who has made the [...]

Unlike all of Bush’s recent speeches that have been given to vetted and cheering supporters, the people listening to his UN General Assembly address actually know the score. Slate (a perennial favorite around here) talks about how he gave a campaign speech anyway. Did you think we couldn’t possibly look any worse to [...]

Robert Novak, Jon Stewart’s "Douchebag For Freedom" has said that Bush will pull out of Iraq after the election.

Will someone explain to me when it became illegal in the United States to express displeasure with the sitting administration? CNN is reporting that the mother of a soldier killed in Iraq was arrested at a campaign speech by Laura Bush. The woman wanted to ask the First Lady "Why the senators, the legislators, [...]

Yahoo is reporting that a large explosion and mushroom cloud have been seen in North Korea. BBC is reporting this as well. Colin Powell has issued a statement that nothing indicates that it is a nuclear blast, but with a reported mushroom cloud diameter of approximately 2.5 miles, it is unclear to me [...]

Sure, we all know the situation in Iraq is pretty miserable and likely to get worse. But how much worse, and what form will it all take? I highly recommend reading this report by the Royal Institute of International Affairs for a thorough assessment of the entire situation and how it impacts the [...]

If you are an ignorant American like me, you hear about the ongoing conflict between Chechnya and Russia, but don’t have much of an idea as to what it is all about. The Russian authorities blame this latest terror attack on al Qaida and our own government uses it to look for allies in [...]

Ignoramus that I am, I had never heard of the "Kitchen Debate" between Nixon and Khrushchev. The transcript is very interesting to read.

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, has declined the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest military honor bestowed by the United States. President Bush wishes to present it in honor of the UK’s support of the Iraq war, even as most of the rest of the world criticized the [...]

This is completely beyond my understanding. Apparently, a 16-year old girl in Iran was charged with "moral corruption," which is a strange euphemism for having been raped. So, just to be clear, she was being charged for having been the victim of rape. In her trial, she was not allowed to have [...]