Rick Wagoner and Our Culture of Incompetence

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm has called fired GM CEO Rick Wagoner a “sacrificial lamb.” The wonder is how many think she’s right.

Read the posted comments to any news story about Wagoner’s firing, and you’ll find more than a smattering of two views. One sees the firing—in exchange for decagigabucks of government money—as a harbinger of Stalin and the Bolshevik hordes. Lock and load your rifle and prepare to repel the hammer and sickle! The other apparently comes from workers in the auto industry. Somehow, they believe that dismissing Wagoner is dissing their industry and their work.

But sometimes it helps to have a few facts before rendering opinions. Here, in tabular form, is what happened to GM under Wagoner’s “leadership:”

The Decline of GM under Rick Wagoner
Benchmark	Before Wagoner	After Wagoner (today)
U.S. Market Share	33.2% (1994)	18.8%
Stock Price	$70 (2000)	$2 (3/31/09)
Cumulative loss	None (profit for 1993-2005)	$ 182 billion

Here, reproduced from an earlier post, is a table comparing the percentage of tested GM cars recommended by Consumer Reports with similar percentages for Chrysler and leading Japanese brands.

Consumer Reports’ Share of Tested Vehicles Recommended
Subaru	Honda	Toyota	GM	Chrysler
100%	95%	89%	17%	0%

If you ran a business, would you hire or fire someone with this record? How bad does it have to get before you let a “leader” go?

When I was young, “The Age of Aquarius” was a popular song. Its message was that we were entering an era where everyone would get along. No one would shout or declaim, or, apparently, strive or fire losers. We arrived at that destination long ago. Today most of us live in Lake Woebegone, Garrison Keillor’s fictional town where “all the children are above average.”

Keillor’s mantra makes us laugh because we recognize its underlying truth. We routinely tolerate subpar performance and stupidity because we want to get along. We value self-esteem and personal harmony more than brains, competence and achievement. We have adopted a culture of mediocrity for the sake of feeling good. How else can you explain the public response to such a loser’s firing? How else can you explain the consistently poor quality of GM’s cars?

There’s also another lesson in Wagoner’s story. He spent most of his career at GM, but is he really a car guy?

To answer that question, read his biography. No doubt he’s a smart guy. But he has an undergraduate degree in economics and an MBA. He started his working life as a financial analyst. He proved good with numbers, so he rose to the top. As far as you can tell from his biography, he knows as much about engineering as does Carly Fiorina, who majored in medieval history and philosophy and, before she was fired, nearly did for HP what Wagoner did for GM.

If you think these are isolated instances, think again. Who ruined our economy? Financial gurus and their promoters. Then read Kevin Phillips’ brilliant book about the financialization of our economy. When you put financiers and marketers in charge of designing and building machines, you get cars like GM’s.

Some years ago, I met an up-and-coming young Chinese at an international conference. He was tall, smart and handsome, spoke good English, and stood ramrod straight. Obviously he had had military training. He was in charge of an important industrial office in government and on the rise.

In our country, an equivalent bureaucrat would almost certainly have been a lawyer. So I got curious and asked him his background. He trained as an engineer and had spent over a decade managing a big steel plant. Now he heads a national commission in charge of transitioning big state enterprises to private ownership and global competition.

In China, it seems, engineers run heavy industry. In our country, it’s lawyers, financiers and marketers. If you want to know why we’re losing the battle to keep our heavy industry competitive and on shore, you need look no further than that.

A guy like Wagoner will never know when his company is producing Rube Goldberg machines. He doesn’t have the background or the training. He probably doesn’t even know what he’s looking at when he pops open the hood.

How, pray tell, can such a man run a car company? His record is a testament to our financialized culture of incompetence. His retention, despite his long and sorry record of failure, reflects our Age of Aquarius.

Maybe our new President—our first post-Boomer commander in chief—can break the Aquarian spell. It doesn’t matter whether a politician or business leader breaks it, as long as someone does. If that spell stays in effect, our industrial and economic leadership will be history in about a decade.

P.S. (Update 4/2/09) If you want to see what happens in a country where engineers run the auto industry, not lawyers, financiers or marketers, read this.


Footnote 1: Wagoner took charge of GM’s North American operations in 1994, became COO in 1998 and CEO in 2000.

Footnote 2: Published at the height of the religious right’s power, American Theocracy has a misleading title. As the book’s much longer subtitle reveals, two-thirds of it focus on oil and political power and the transformation from a manufacturing economy to one based on pushing paper. In the last third, Phillips convincingly compares the declines of past empires to our own decline as we undergo that transformation. Whether we can arrest it remains to be seen.


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Rube Goldberg Machines on Our Streets

Rube Goldberg was a brilliant cartoonist who satirized Americans’ preoccupation with technology. He was (and still is) famous for drawing outlandish machines that work through complex and humorous chains of causation. His name came to stand for any absurdly complex device.

Today’s auto-industry executives wonder why sales of cars are off 50%. One reason may be what they make and sell.

The internal combustion engine (ICE) that powers cars today is a Rube Goldberg machine come to life. Nearly all of its complexity and expense are devoted to eliminating unintended consequences of its motive force: sequentially exploding fuel.

The ICE derives its power from a series of separately timed explosions of fuel and air. To capture their force, ICEs use reciprocating pistons. These devices must be finely machined and surrounded by special piston rings, so the hot explosive gases won’t escape around them. Because pistons only move up and down, ICEs use crankshafts to transform their reciprocating motion into rotary motion to power the wheels.

Now crankshafts are ridiculous-looking devices, with offset journals to which the piston rods connect and counterweights to keep the thing from vibrating. The forces they handle are considerable, so they must be made of specially hardened alloys and machined to exacting precision. Their bearings are so critical that they require continuous lubrication with circulating oil, which in turn requires a large oil reservoir and a separate oil pump.

And that’s just the beginning. Getting fuel and air into the cylinder and exhaust gases out requires hardened metal valves with precisely controlled motion. Controlling them is the job of another asymmetrical shaft with offset pieces, known as a camshaft, which pushes the metal valves inward against stiff springs. Its rotation relies on special gears and an adjustable timing chain for precision. Timing the actual explosions requires another whole system: spark plugs that make sparks to trigger the explosions and a “distributor” of electrical energy, geared to the main shaft’s rotation, to time the sparks precisely.

Now ignition sparks don’t come for free. They need electricity, a battery to store it, and an electric generator to charge the battery as the car runs and depletes it. In addition, ICEs require external power to “turn” them for starting, so they have special electric starter motors, solenoids that provide massive jolts of electricity for cold starts, and keys and ignition systems to switch on the solenoids and starters.

With all this complexity, the ICE is terribly inefficient. It converts less than 34% of the energy in fuel into motion; the rest it wastes as heat. To keep the wasted heat from destroying the engine, oil and coolant circulate through the cylinder block, moved by special pumps, to draw excess heat away. A water-based coolant, augmented by specially formulated “anti-freeze” compounds in cold climates, flows through a radiator, which vents heat into the atmosphere, where it is wasted and contributes minutely to global warming. The radiator requires a moving fan to boost air flow, which in modern cars has a solid-state-controlled motor and temperature gauge.

But that’s still not all. Even when working perfectly, the ICE is a recalcitrant beast. Its torque (rotary power) depends strongly on how fast the crankshaft is turning. So designers have to add a transmission, with a gearshift and some sort of clutch (manual or automatic), to change gears as the engine “revs up.”

Furthermore, when the car turns, each of two opposing wheels turn at a different speed. So the car needs a “differential” transmission on each axle to allow its wheels to turn at different rates without stressing the axle, wheels and tires. Since the rate at which the engine turns also determines the best fuel-air mixture, the engine needs a fuel injector or (in the old days) a carburetor to change the mixture as the engine “revs up.”

Finally, an ICE requires exhaust manifolds to take the burning exhaust gases out of the cylinders. The manifold leads the exhaust to a single pipe, which has a muffler to keep the still-explosive exhaust from hurting our ears. And if we want to get rid of the worst pollutants before they enter air we breathe, the muffler also must have a catalytic converter, which uses one of the most expensive materials known: platinum.

To sum up, a car’s ICE requires at least a baker’s dozen complete systems to ignite, control and time its sequential explosions, convert their power into rotary motion, and deal with all the undesirable side effects of excess heat and exhaust. Those systems are: (1) distributor, spark plugs and wires, (2) battery and generator, (3) pistons and rings, (4) valves, camshaft, timing gear and chain, (5) piston rods and crankshaft, (6) oil reservoir and oil pump, (7) coolant, coolant pump and radiator, (8) transmission and shifter, (9) differential transmissions for axles, (10) exhaust manifold and pipe, (11) muffler, (12) catalytic converter, and (13) starter motor, solenoid and ignition system to start the whole thing off.

With all these Rube Goldberg systems, it’s a wonder current cars work at all, let alone reliably.

In contrast, an electric car has two systems: (1) a battery and its solid-state controller, (2) one or more electric motors. The same motor(s) that power the car generate electricity as the car slows down and brakes, and a well-designed solid-state controller can put that power right back into the battery. Toyota’s Prius already does all this.

But unlike the Prius, which has a complicated variable transmission, fully electric cars have no need for any transmission at all. The reason: electric motors have a “flat” torque curve. They produce about the same torque throughout their total range of “revs.” That range is far larger than ICEs’ range because electric motors have nothing so asymmetrical and prone to vibration as pistons, connecting rods, a crankshaft or a camshaft. Since heavy-duty commercial electric motors achieve 80% to 90% efficiency, they have no need for coolants or radiators. And since electric motors are small and relatively cheap, designers can put one on each wheel, eliminating axles and axle differentials entirely while providing fully independent four-wheel drive.

Now imagine that you like simplicity and reliability. Which kind of engine would you prefer? Which do you think would be easier to operate and maintain? Which would be less likely to break down and cheaper to repair if it did?

Then imagine that, for most of the last century, designers had to use batteries based on lead—the heaviest non-radioactive, widely available metal—because they had no other technology. Imagine further that they had discovered how to make batteries with lithium, the third lightest chemical element. [Lithium (symbol Li, atomic number 3, atomic weight 7) is about fifteen times lighter per unit of power than lead (symbol Pb, atomic number 82, atomic weight 207).] Imagine that commercial production of electric cars with lithium batteries was imminent. Wouldn’t you want to buy one?

Now imagine that the world’s once-largest car maker (now number two) had promised to make an electric car and sell it in about eighteen months, and that most of the rest of the car industry—although a bit behind—had followed suit. Imagine that the price of fuel for ICEs had yo-yoed between less than $ 1 and $ 4 a gallon in the last four years alone.

Then imagine that you could buy a car that would run on electricity, one that wouldn’t produce any loud noise, smells, stains, carbon monoxide or noxious odors. Imagine that you could do your part to make us energy independent and to reduce global warming by buying one. Imagine further that you could “fill it up” in your garage, without ever going to a gas station. Imagine that [see chart at end] it could reach highway speeds as quickly as another small car and would take you where you need to go for work and routine chores. Wouldn’t you wait for one?

Of course the economy matters. Many people aren’t buying cars because the economy is collapsing all around them and they don’t know whether they’ll have a job or a home next month.

But maybe they’re also tired of spending huge amounts for their second biggest purchases (after their homes) on Rube Goldberg machines. Maybe they’re tired of being jerked around by gas prices that change every week, while the price of electric power stays constant or varies only slowly. Maybe they want to do their parts to curb climate change. Maybe they see the near future and are willing to wait for it.

If so, good luck to all the sellers of Rube Goldberg machines out there. Like sellers of horse-drawn buggies at the turn of the last century, they’ll need it.

P.S. Superfluous Rube Goldberg Machines

While the Obama Administration is considering how much bailout money to give GM and Chrysler, it might read the latest Consumer Reports. In a two-page article [subscription required] entitled “Who Makes the Best Cars?”, CR gives the world’s leading manufacturers report cards. It bases its grades on the average test score of each manufacturer’s tested cars, its extensive customer surveys of reliability, and the percentage of each maker’s tested vehicles that CR recommends.

Out of fifteen manufacturers listed, GM and Chrysler came in dead last, in that order. The percentage of tested vehicles that CR recommends was even more revealing, as shown in the following table:

Consumer Reports’ Percent of Tested Vehicles Recommended
Subaru	Honda	Toyota	GM	Chrysler
100%	95%	89%	17%	0%

The overall scores were similiar, with the leading Japanese makers in the mid-to-high seventies and GM and Chrysler weighing in at 57 and 48, respectively. (Ford came in fourth from last, with only motorcycle-maker Suzuki, which started making cars as a sideline, intervening.)

In an auto industry about to be creatively destroyed by new electric technology and environmental necessity, how much sense does it make to invest taxpayer money in cars that are not only Rube Goldberg machines, but the worst Rube Goldberg machines in the field? Electric cars will still need parts like tail lights, bumpers, mirrors and frames, so maybe the bailout effort should focus on parts makers, rather than makers of the very worst cars.

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Creative Destruction

[For a brief comment on the future of securitization, click here.]

It pays to listen carefully to really smart people.

Our huge, diverse land has many of them. For the last eight years they’ve kept their heads down, as hurricanes of mindless bombast roared by. Now that we have a really smart president, they seem to be popping up all over.

One of them is Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO and an early Obama supporter. He strutted his stuff on Charlie Rose recently. He uses simple language—rarely a polysyllabic word. Yet his thoughts are uncannily precise and insightful. He speaks the way the best of us write after four or five drafts.

You could tell right away something special was going on. Uncharacteristically, Rose interviewed Schmidt before an audience of educated professionals, who reacted appreciatively. If you missed the show, you can watch it on line.

Toward the end of the interview, Schmidt said something simple but profound. If you have to survive a depression like the one now beginning, you’d rather be in America than anywhere else. Why? Because it’ll be “more painful, [but] you’ll get out faster.”

I didn’t fully appreciate Schmid’s sagacity until the next day, when I read a New York Times article headlined: “Job Losses Hint at Vast Remaking of Economy.”

Industrial economist Joseph Schumpeter was another really smart man. He described capitalist innovation as “a perennial gale of creative destruction[.]”

Many people have quoted that marvelous phrase, but few understand it fully. It means there are two sides to the coin: creation and destruction. You can’t have one without the other. Old industries and ways of life must die so that new ones can be born and thrive. Destruction and dying are painful but necessary companions to creation. They are the pain to which Schmidt referred.

Schmidt’s optimistic prediction—that the pain will be severe but brief—depends on us heeding Schumpeter’s warning. Unfortunately, we Americans have become soft: we wince at pain. As a result, vital sectors of our economy have put their creative destruction off far too long. So now they need a much bigger dose of it, and the result will be more painful.

Although we invented nuclear power, over half our electricity still comes from burning coal—a nineteenth-century technology that is destroying our biosphere. For transportation we depend almost totally on oil, an early twentieth-century fuel that (in economic terms) is rapidly becoming scarce. For health care, we rely on outmoded and failing private markets that all our trading partners have abandoned.

Not only that. Our private markets in health care leave 47 million “customers” unserved. Aren’t shortages and rationing supposed to be consequences of socialism and central command, not capitalism and free markets? We’ve turned capitalist economic theory on its head, and no one even noticed.

Our auto industry is another example, if one were needed. While the Japanese introduced the Wankel engine and hybrid technology, our car industry has introduced no basic advance in propulsion technology in over fifty years. Now we wonder why it’s going under.

Why have we let these failing industries linger so long? The reason has nothing to do with capitalism. They’ve entrenched themselves far beyond their technological or market merit by subverting government to their own ends.

For most of a century these three basic industries (fossil fuels, autos, and health care) have enjoyed massive direct and indirect governmental subsidies. Not only have they been mostly free from reasonable regulation; their rivals have often been more heavily regulated. What was the taxpayer-built Interstate Highway System but a massive subsidy to the automobile and fossil-fuel industries? As for regulation, these industries paid few, if any, of the costs they impose on society through pollution, climate change, economic waste and (in the case of health care) lack of prevention, belated treatment, needless suffering and death. They all have been favored children of government, maintaining their predominance not through free markets, but though lobbying, political contributions and other forms of special influence.

Since government has always been part of the problem, it has to be part of the solution. For decades it has favored these industries in ways big and small. It has postponed their inevitable destruction without regard to Schumpeter’s capitalist credo. It’s past time for them to exchange the government-rocked cradle for the coffin.

Our banking meltdown and collapsing general economy leave no alternative. Government must help jump-start creative new industries to replace the ones we’re losing because, in an imploding economy, no one else can. Only government can help young industries give us electric cars, rapid transit and the windmills, solar energy and safe nuclear energy to run them, as well as smaller, denser planned communities (with well-staffed local health clinics) that use them more efficiently, so as to preserve our clean air and our biosphere.

One of my favorite stories of resistance to change comes from the steam-engine era. After watching a steam locomotive reach the unheard-of speed of twelve miles an hour, a newspaperman was inconsolable. Such vicious velocity, he wailed, would destroy our way of life by frightening the horses.

Some people resist inevitable change; others embrace it. In the final analysis, that may be the most salient difference between Republicans and Democrats. A few weeks ago one Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal huffed:

“There isn’t much in [the President’s] plan to stir the national soul. It’s about ‘sacrifice’ now so that we can live for a future of small electric cars and windmills.”

If saving our biosphere, achieving energy independence, and exchanging stinky, cantankerous cars for smoke-free ones that run more cheaply and more reliably, and that you can “fill up” from a plug in your garage, doesn’t stir the soul, I don’t know what will. As I read Henninger’s words, I mentally added “and give up our horses.”

Henninger also failed to note a few minor relevancies. First, the world is running out of the oil on which we depend utterly for transportation, so sacrifice is inevitable. Second, the economic laws of demand and supply inelasticity, which Wall Street Journal pundits ought to know, decree ever-increasing prices for oil, as soon as the global economy starts to recover. Third, he failed to mention that it takes millions of years for Nature to make oil, and we humans need all we’ve got as feedstock for chemicals, fertilizers and plastics. Finally, he failed to note that profligate burning of fossil fuels is changing our climate and destroying our way of life far more dramatically than the disappearance of horses or the decreasing popularity of SUVs and muscle cars.

As always, our youth will save us from ourselves. Is there any wonder that they favor the President and his visionary program by substantial margins? Youth understand the power of creative destruction because applying that power and achieving both destruction and renewal are their eternal role.

Resurrecting Securitization

Today’s Paul Krugman column raises a vital question: will the resurrected system of loan securitization that Tim Geithner plans look more like Christ risen or a vampire emerging from a coffin?

As you may recall, securitization is the process of “bundling” loans and selling the bundles to get the loans off the lending institution’s books. It also has another purpose: slicing and dicing the bundles allow financial firms remote from the lender to separate various levels of risk and, by placing bets on those levels, presumably to control risk better.

You may also recall that this theory didn’t work. Instead of helping Wall Street to manage risk better, it encouraged extreme leverage and rampant gambling, which ultimately crashed the entire financial system.

Krugman is unequivocal about his conclusions. “I don’t think the Obama administration can bring securitization back to life,” he writes, “and I don’t believe it should try.”

Oddly enough, Warren Buffet said much the same thing (albeit in different words) about derivatives just a few weeks ago. In his much-awaited annual letter as CEO of Berkshire Hathway, he wrote:

“Improved ‘transparency’—a favorite remedy of politicians, commentators and financial regulators for averting future train wrecks—won’t cure the problems that derivatives pose. I know of no reporting mechanism that would come close to describing and measuring the risks in a huge and complex portfolio of derivatives. Auditors can’t audit these contracts, and regulators can’t regulate them.”

Until I read Krugman’s column today, I was deeply skeptical of securitization but still agnostic. It does leverage funds available to lend, thereby potentially loosening credit, which is tight right now. But clear and strong opposition from a Nobel Prize winning academic economist and the world’s smartest investor caused me to rethink.

To me, the crux of the matter is moral hazard. A wise lender knows her borrower. If a bad decision stands to lose her money, she will be careful. But securitization whisks the risk away from the lender to some remote office on Wall Street. Not only that: by bundling hundreds or thousands of loans together, it makes the risk of each seem negligible, even though the whole is nothing more than the sum of the parts.

Maybe this wouldn’t matter if people were dispassionate, rational computers. Then Wall Street could accurately assess the risks of each loan in a bundle and add them up.

But people are not computers, and that’s not what actually happened. Instead, people at every level—lenders, securitizers, sellers of securities, and insurers through credit-default swaps and other sophisticated instruments—had incentives to increase throughput and underestimate risks. The final link in the chain, the rating agencies, had incentives to rate high (to increase their fees) and disincentives to accuracy (because no one had ever devised a good mathematical model for a bubble popping). The results we see in shambles all around us.

Unlike computers, people need to feel a sense of personal responsibility to do the right thing. Securitization ignores that very human element. It is the financial equivalent of saying to troops in Afghanistan, “If you lose courage or screw up, your buddy next to you won’t be hurt, but some guy you once knew in high school might.” No one would run an army that way, and no one should run a financial system that way, either.

To do its work, moral hazard has to be felt and tasted. Securitization prevents that from happening. It takes the consequences of lending decisions to some remote office far away. To make that sort of system work well, you’d have to change not just regulation, but human nature.

So I add my small voice to Krugman’s and Buffet’s megaphones. Let’s make banking stodgy and boring but reliable again. Then let’s get back to the serious business of reforming our basic industries. If we put all those misdirected financial brains back to work doing something productive, who knows what we might achieve?



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TITLE AND SUBJECT INDEX TO POSTS (CURRENT AS OF 1/23/17)

NOTE: For technical reasons, the date of this index (above) is wrong. I try to keep it current, usually within two months. For more recent posts, click here.

HOW TO USE THIS INDEX:

IF YOU KNOW THE POST’S TITLE, search for the title (or its key words) using your browser’s “Find” feature (usually Ctrl-F or Cmnd-F) IF NOT, review the Subject Index below and find the post under the appropriate heading, in alphabetical order. (Many posts are classified under multiple headings, so be patient: there are over 900 essays, with most classified several times.) You can also use Google’s search engine, on the extreme top of any page, to search for key words outside post titles, but it will only find the most recent post with those words.

[NOTE TO READERS: This index previously appeared on the blog’s home page, along with the most current post. But it got too long and unwieldy for Google’s template page and so was moved here.]

SUBJECT INDEX
[New Category—Morality—added 4/28/13]

• American Culture
• The Auto Industry
• Barack and Michelle Obama
• The Computer Industry
• The Constitution
• Donald J. Trump [Added 1/23/17]
• The Economy
• Energy Policy
• Faith and Public Policy
• Foreign Affairs
•   International Trade
•   Other General Topics
•   Afghanistan and Pakistan
•   Arabian/Islamic Liberation
•   Bush Administration
•   China
•   Diplomacy
•   The European Union
•   Iran
•   Iraq
•   Islamic State
•   Israel
•   Libya
•   North Korea
•   Al Qaeda
•   Russia
•   Saudi Arabia [New on 7/2/14]
•   Syria [New on 10/29/16]
•   Turkey [New on 10/29/16]
•   Ukraine [New on 3/29/14]
• Gender and Sexism
• Globalization
• Global Warming [New on 3/29/14]
• Gender and Sexism
• Health Care
• The Media and Their Performance
• The Military and Intelligence
• Morality
• Politics
•   2017
•   2016
•   2015
•   2014
•   2013
•   2012
•   2011
•   2010
•   2009
•   2008
•   2007
•   2006
•   2005
•   2004
•   2003 or before
• Race and Racism
• Texas

American Culture (See also Gender and Sexism, Race and Racism, Texas)

• Abortion
• Acting Like Adults
• A Dozen Reasons for House Members to Vote for Health-Insurance Reform
• AIG Executives’ Protection Racket
• The Alpha Tribe
• An American Allegory
• An American Soap Opera
• America’s Two Crises [Default and Murdoch]
• And you thought government was bad!
• “Apotheosis of War” [and Southern culture]
• Arab Liberation: Which Side Are We On?
• Assassinations and Yankee History
• Attorney General Holder: A Good Man Leaving
• The Awful Arithmetic of Citizens United
• The Banality of Evil
• The Bancrofts’ Big Decision
• Bankers’ Chutzpah
• Best is Best
• Big Tobacco’s Just Deserts
• Bitter
• Black Lives Matter: The White Pledge
• Bonus Lessons
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• Breaking Bankers’ Death Grip on Our Global Economy
• Endnote: bringing back smoke-filled rooms
• Bye, Bye American Media, or Why I’m Dropping the New York Times
• Bye, Bye Boomers
• Campaign Math 101
• Can Bloomberg.com succeed the Wall Street Journal Now That It’s Dead?
• Can the “Bums” Win Again?
• Can Europe Help Save Us?
• Can Markets Be Wrong?
• Cell-Phone Risk
• Changing America, Starting with Dixie
• The Charleston Massacre
• Cheap Culture
• Chief Justice Roberts on “Obamacare”
• Childish Things
• China Rising II: The Hantsu Hypothesis
• A Clean, Fair and Honest Campaign
• Clintonian Heresy
• Compare Character
• Coming Unglued [Our Gaming Financial Sector]
• “Computers” and Other Anachronisms, or Whither Apple and China?
• A Conspiracy of Silence? [About Tea Party’s Deep-South Origins]
• Coussoule and Boehner, A Comparison
• A Critical Year End
• Curing Racism by Teaching Tolerance in our Schools
• The Curious Case of Tom Daschle
• Cutting Our New President Some Slack
• “Daddy! Mommy! I want more oil!”
• Darfur
• A Day to Cherish
• The Death of “Conservatism”?
• Decentralization
• Defending the Indefensible [The adversary system moving beyond its Peter Principle]
• “The Defiant Ones”
• Democrats for McCain?
• Demonic Yankee Cynicism
• Denying Reality, or Why the GOP’s Internal Reform Will Take Some Time
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• The Dilbert Effect, or Don’t Knock Hope
• Don’t [to American Voters in 2012 Elections]
• The Dumbing of America [decline in education]
• Dystopia
• Ecclesiastes and the EU
• Eleven Questions for All Presidential Candidates
• The Empathy Gap
• The End of an Era
• Engineering America: Making Things Work Again
• Coda: An Exemplary Many-to-Many Online Community [Amazon.com’s product reviewers]
• The Explainers [Catholics and Jews]
• “Fake news”: Democracy’s Hemlock
• Father Knows Best, Or Does He? [re Stalin and Dubya]
• Faux Democracy
• Fear and Age [as Causes of the GOP’s Decline]
• Fear, Delusion and Their Antidote
• Fear Itself
• The Fighter Pilot
• Financial Stampedes: Positive Feedback inside the “Invisible Hand”
• First-Amendment Extremism and the Fairness Doctrine
• Follow the Light!
• The Forgetful Inventor, Whom Others Are Passing By
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• A Forty Year Dry Spell
• France and Germany versus the [American] Psychopaths
• Frat Boy II
• Four Ayatollahs and a Decider [The Supreme Court and “Obamacare”]
• Futurophobia
• Gang Rule, or Government by Extortion
• The Gang’s New Capo
• George Washington and Vladimir Putin
• Germany and America II: Could it Happen Here?
• Good Media: Where to Go for Real News
• A Good Three Weeks for Our Species [7/15]
• Gossip and Policy
• Gripping Political Theater [in Debt-Default Endgame]
• Grover Norquist’s World: Indentured Servitude for Youth
• Gut Level [issue presentation]
• China Rising II: The Hantsu Hypothesis
• He Did His Homework
• High Noon on PBS [Lehrer Interviews McConnell]
• Hillary 2016
• Holocaust Memorial Day
• House Tea-Party Roster by Region
• How Karl Rove and Frank Luntz Destroyed the Republican Party
• How our Eleven Big Yankee Problems Still Fester
• How Republican Ideology Destroyed America’s Competitiveness
  and Sapped Her Strength
• How Rick Santelli Killed the Housing Rescue
• Human Perfectibility and Social Engineering: Candide, Yellen and the Pope
• Ideological Mirror Images and Olympic Lessons
• Immigrants, Alpha Males, and America’s Three Cultures
• An Immodest Proposal, or Flying 2015
• Inaccurate
• Independence Day
• In Myths and Rumors Credimus
• Infrastructure, Industrial Policy, and Economic Recovery
• “Intelligent Design” and Engineering: A Tale of Orwellian Word Theft
• Is Chicken Little Wrong? [The economics of default brinksmanship]
• Is Facebook Doing Us In?
• Is Hillary Dangerous?
• Islamophobia: Three Lies
• It’s the Bystanders, Stupid!
• It’s Character, Stupid! [that’s killing our country]
• “I’ve Got Mine, Jack!”: The American Recipe for Dystopia
• Jeff Bezos and the Pope
• Joe Biden
• Joe Klein, Watching Fox, and the Civil War’s Final End
• John Kerry and Why Culture Matters
• Judge Sotomayor and “Identity Politics”
• Know Thy Extortionists [Tea Party as Old South revival]
• Krugman the Authoritarian
• Krugman, Reason and Culture [and their Effects on National Default]
• Lack of Imagination I: Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft
• The Leader [USA] Falls
• Learning to Love Logic
• Lesson from Fort Hood
• The Lesson of Ebola
• Lessons of 9/11, Ten Years Later
• [The Lessons of] Midterms 2014
• Let Them Go! The Case for Secession
• Levels of Paranoia and the “Scanner Revolt”
• Lightweights and Heavyweights
• Lloyd Blankfein, Bashar Al-Assad, and the Pope
• Looking for God in a Godless World
• A Loser’s Confession
• Luffing Time
• Mad Money Men Mayhem
• Magna Carta at 800: A Global Teachable Moment
• The Manhattan Dragon and Sir Cyrus of Vance
• Man Hoo Kwong, or Why We Yanks Need More, not Fewer, Immigrants
• The Marathon Bombers: Alpha Males Lost in Modern Civilization?
• Mars, Venus and Presidential Politics
• “The Martian”
• Martin and Bernie
• Meritocracy Restored
• Michelle’s American Story
• Mirror of Tragedy
• Misdirected “Populism,” and How to Fix It
• MLK Day 2017
• Mortgages, Law and Culture, or Why Plato Still Matters
• A Multipolar World
• Muhammad Ali Obituary
• My Dozen Tweets
• My (Never-Given) Matriculation Speech
• A Nation of Boors
• “Neglecting the Base,” or the Meaning of “We”
• Nervous Nellies
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• The New Royalists (and the New Guillotines)
• A Noose for America’s Middle Class
• A Note on Campaign Financing
• Nothing Has Changed
• November 2014
• Obama and Evangelicals
• Obama and Romney: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Obamacare, Gay Marriage and our High Court
• Obama’s Sense of Perspective
• “Occupy Wall Street” Movement: Initial Information
• That Old Alpha Thing, or Why Obama Might Lose
• “Old Europe”
• An Open Appeal to Edwards Voters
• An Open Letter to Print Journalists
• Ordinary People Matter
• “Our gall is not like your gall.”
• Our Global Moral Crisis
• Our Own Jackie Robinson
• Our New Serfs
• Our Republican Platform (Pledge to America)
• Our Still Dysfunctional Congress
• Addendum: The Party of “No” Goes Garden Trampling
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• Our Woebegone Banks
• Outrage! (The Shirley Sherrod Story)
• A Papal Lesson in Humility
• Party of Extremists
• Perseverance
• The Philadelphia “Debate”
• Potatoes and Birds [or how pols differ]
• Prejudice and Pride
• The President’s Bow
• The President’s Climate-Survival Speech: An Adult in a Marvel-Comix Culture
• Prince Ea
• A Prose Ode to Female Leaders
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Proving Dratler’s Law
• Update: Psychopaths in Congress
• Racism and Excessive Force
• Random Acts of Journalism [A Critique of Modern Media]
• The Real Antichrists
• Reds on the Right
• Redundancy
• Resurrecting Securitization
• Revolt of the Experts
• Rick Wagoner and Our Culture of Incompetence
• Rotten Business
• Sarah and Sonia: A Post-Fourth Note
• Search-and-Seizure Heresy
• A Season for Workers?
• The “Second-Amendment Solution”
• The SEC’s Suit against Goldman, Sachs: What it Means
• Selfishness is Not a Plan
• Senator Clinton, Please Step Aside!
• A Sense of Perspective
• Seven Questions for Sarah Palin Fans
• Simplicity and “Obamacare”
• Size Matters
• The Sizzle and the Steak
• A Snide Slander [of Pete Seeger] Unbefitting an Economist
• Soothing: The Last Debate
• The Sorry State of our Union [in 1/2014]
• Stalin in America? [comparing Boehner]
• State of the Union [2011]
• Smugness and the New Feudalism
• Steve Jobs, An American Original, R.I.P.
• Succession and Selection of Leaders [in China and the US]
• A Super Special Prosecutor
• Tax Cuts for the Rich and DADT: Two Litmus Tests
• Tax Phobia
• A Terrible Price [we’ve paid for racism]
• The “Texas Question” Answered
• Thanksgiving Message [2007]
• Thanksgiving Message 2008
• Thanksgiving [2011]: A Good Day to “Come Out”
• Thanksgiving Message 2012: A Baker’s Dozen Reasons to be Thankful
• Thanksgiving Message 2013
• Thanksgiving 2015
• Thanksgiving Message [Belated, 2016]
• Think!—A Voter’s Guide for 2010
• Thinking Outside the Box: A Zero Capital-Gains Tax
• Three Big Health-Care Lies
• A Time of Reverence and Awe
• Tired of Lies
• Tough
• Trade
• The Traps Our Founders Foresaw (that We Fell In)
• Tribalism
• The Trouble with Filibusters
• Coda: A Truly Alien Culture [in our South]
• Trump’s Four Tribes
• Trump’s Reality Show
• Trump: Theft of a Generational Fraud
• Twenty Reasons to Vote Democratic in 2008
• Two Things You Can Do Right Now to Help Save America
• Universal Economic Education: Wising Up
• Us Against Them
• Van Jones
• The Vindication of Same-Sex Marriage, and the Chief Justice’s Cautionary Note
• Virtue
• “That Vision Thing”
• Vital Numbers
• Was Orwell Right?
• Watching the Sun Set [on the American Century]
• Whence Morality?
• Why the “Defense of Marriage” Act is Inhuman, not Just Inhumane
• Why Hillary is Dangerous II: Pandering
• Why I Gave Obama Another $2,300
• Why Mitt Lost
• Why New Jersey (and lately NYC) [rebel against partisan gridlock]?
• The Woody Allen Test [failing to vote]
• Working Together
• Yes, We Did!
• Young People, Save Us (and Yourselves)!
• You’ve Got to Know Something
• The Zimmerman Matter
• Zucotti Park, or the Power of Numbers

The Auto Industry

• Update (11/20/10 & 1/06/11)—Electric Cars: Volt, Leaf or Focus?
• Breaking Up is Easy To Do
• California’s EPA Waiver
• Comparative Energy Costs of Driving: Cents per Mile
• The Electric-Car Paradigm Shift
• Electric cars’ driving-cost advantages
• Electric Geezermobiles
• Energy Policy: Good Batteries and How to Get Them
• The First Big Mistake
• Getting Smart
• How Electric Cars Can Beat their Gasoline and Natural-Gas Rivals
• The iCar?
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• It’s a Tesla Model X! [that I’m buying]
• Lack of Imagination II: Making the Volt Succeed
• Lack of Imagination III: Selling Engineering, for a Change
• A Loser’s Confession
• Luffing Time
• Missing the Point, Again and Again [Energy Infrastructure]
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Natural Gas: the Best Transitional Fuel
• A New Environmental Vision
• Obama’s Energy Mistake
• Obama’s Velvet Glove
• Our Global Paradigm Shift
• Race for the Future
• Recovery by the Numbers
• Rick Wagoner and Our Culture of Incompetence
• Rotten Business
• Rube Goldberg Machines on Our Streets
• Saving the Big Three [Car Makers]
• Saving the Big Three II: Accountability
• A Season for Workers?
• Signs of a Sick Democracy: the First New Hampshire “Debate”
• Solar Car Payback
• A Solution to Our Energy Crisis: The Chevy Volt
• Thank You, Iowa, and Hello Huntsman
• Three Big Health-Care Lies
• Update on Oil Prices and Electric Cars [4/15]
• U.S. Industrial Policy: “Cash for Clunkers” and Cap & Trade
• Variable-Range and Variable-Performance Cars
• Wall Street Journal Buys Into Electric Cars
• What some imagination could do for electric cars
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• Who Should Drive Electric Cars
• Why Cars and Trucks Should Switch to Natural Gas Now
• Why I’ll Buy a Volt
• Why I’ll Buy a Volt II
• Working Quietly and Well

Barack and Michelle Obama [For topical matters relating to the campaign, see Politics.]

• Acting Like Adults
• Arrogance and Humility
• A Baker’s Dozen Reasons Why Obama is Best
• Barack Obama and Colin Powell
• Barack Obama’s Good Weekend and Sterling Endorsements
• Barack Obama's "Inexperience"
• Can Obama Fight?
• California’s EPA Waiver
• The “Chutzpah” Campaign and How to Beat It
• Clinton and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Compare Character
• Comparing Obama: Three Essential Readings
• Cool
• Cutting Our New President Some Slack
• A Day to Cherish
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• The First Big Mistake
• “Fiscal Cliff” or Briar Patch?
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• A Forty Year Dry Spell
• Further Signs of Greatness
• GDP for Obama
• GDP for Obama II, and Who’s Really a “Taker”
• In Bed with Boehner [On Summers and Geithner]
• In Myths and Rumors Credimus
• Inaccurate
• Is the President a Bleeding Heart?
• It’s the Bystanders, Stupid!
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• Leading is Taking People Where they Wouldn’t Otherwise Go
• Learning to Love Logic
• Lightweights and Heavyweights
• Little Things Mean a Lot [Obama’s First News Conference]
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Meritocracy Restored
• “The Messiah’s” Burden
• Method in His Madness
• Michelle’s American Story
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• No-Bluff Obama
• Obama and Evangelicals
• Obama and Romney: A Handy Comparison Chart
• An Obama Reading List
• Obama’s Energy Mistake
• Obama's Health-Care Plan [May 2007]
• Obama’s Meritocracy
• Obama’s Sense of Perspective
• Obama’s Speech on Race
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• Obama’s Terrorism Speech
• Obama's Touch of Greatness
• Obama’s Velvet Glove
• One of Us
• An Open Letter to the President [re Tax Cuts]
• Our Own Jackie Robinson
• Our Still Dysfunctional Congress
• Outrage! (The Shirley Sherrod Story)
• Perseverance
• The President’s Bow
• The President’s OAS Diplomacy
• The President’s Second Inaugural
• Revolt of the Experts
• A Sense of Perspective
• The Sizzle and the Steak
• Snap!
• The Summers/Geithner Team: Obama’s McNamara or Rumsfeld?
• Tax Cuts for the Rich: A Disastrous Blunder
• Ten Reasons to Back Barack
• Thank you, Mr. President! (An open letter) [5/15]
• Think People, Not Ideas
• Tough
• Three Gates
• War Against War
• What to Do About Obama's Brains
• Who Can Keep Us Safe?
• Working Quietly and Well
• Why I Gave Obama Another $2,300
• Why Judgment Matters
• Yes, He Can! [Obama, debate]

The Computer Industry

• Access to National “Print” Journalism in the Digital Age
• Coming Unglued [Our Gaming Financial Sector]
• “Computers” and Other Anachronisms, or Whither Apple and China?
• DID GOOGLE GET PHISHED?
• Coda: An Exemplary Many-to-Many Online Community [Amazon.com’s product reviewers]
• How Marketers Ruin Websites
• The iCar?
• Iran’s Second Revolution: the First Cyber War
• Is Tim Cook a Disciple of Steve Jobs or Bill Gates?
• Monopolia Delenda Est
• “Our gall is not like your gall.”
• Redundancy
• Shadow War [Cyberwarfare between Russia and US]
• Six Things our President and Every Other High Executive Should Know about Websites
• Steve Jobs, An American Original, R.I.P.
• The Telephone Queue (humor)

The Constitution

• The Awful Arithmetic of Citizens United
• Big Questions Tuesday [Pre-Midterms-2014 Forecast]
• Block Jeff Sessions [from becoming AG]
• Endnote: bringing back smoke-filled rooms
• Changing America, Starting with Dixie
• Chief Justice Roberts on “Obamacare”
• Copyright, Globalization, and the New Roberts Court
• Cutting Our New President Some Slack
• Dystopia
• Engineering America: Making Things Work Again
• Egypt’s Trials: More Common than You Think
• “Fake news”: Democracy’s Hemlock
• Four Ayatollahs and a Decider [The Supreme Court and “Obamacare”]
• Four Myths that Need Debunking
• Holder’s Decision
• Human Perfectibility and Social Engineering: Candide, Yellen and the Pope
• Is Fast Track Constitutional?
• Joe Klein, Watching Fox, and the Civil War’s Final End
• Judge Sotomayor and “Identity Politics”
• At Last the President Leads [on Immigration]
• The Manhattan Dragon and Sir Cyrus of Vance
• A Sense of Perspective
• A Necessary Heresy
• A Non-Violent Coup d’Etat [The theft of our democracy by procedural tricks]
• A Noose for America’s Middle Class
• Object Lessons for Foreign Wars
• One-Man Rule
• The President’s Recess Appointments
• The President's Unauthorized, Secret Spying: A Constitutional Crisis
• Search-and-Seizure Heresy
• The “Second-Amendment Solution”
• A Sense of Perspective
• Speak to Us, Mr. President! (An Open Letter to our Chief Executive)
• A Super Special Prosecutor
• Succession and Selection of Leaders [in China and the US]
• The Traps Our Founders Foresaw (that We Fell In)
• The Trouble with Filibusters
• Coda: A Truly Alien Culture [in our South]
• Trump and Conflicts of Interest
• Two Sentences that Could Save Our Republic
• Vice President Huntsman?
• What Broke our Democracy
• The Zimmerman Matter

Donald J. Trump [Added 1/23/17]

• Anti-Nepotism Laws and the Trump Family
• “Fake news”: Democracy’s Hemlock
• Grading Trump’s Presidency: Benchmarks
• Jeff Sessions: Trump’s First Big Mistake
• General Overview [of Trump’s Team]
• President Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Russia’s Meddling in Our Elections: the Implications are Even Worse Than you Think
• Shadow War [Cyberwarfare between Russia and US]
• Trump and Conflicts of Interest
• Trump’s Inauguration
• Trump’s Four Tribes
• Trump’s Reality Show
• Trump’s Team
• Trump: Theft of a Generational Fraud
• Trump’s Three Big Lies [so far]
• Working with Trump

The Economy

• Update (11/20/10 & 1/06/11)—Electric Cars: Volt, Leaf or Focus?
• AIG Executives’ Protection Racket
• Al Gore’s Energy Challenge
• America is Back!
• An American Allegory
• An American Soap Opera
• America’s Two Crises [Default and Murdoch]
• And you thought government was bad!
• Anti-Deficiency Laws and our Mortgage Crisis
• Are All Bankers Psychopaths?
• Assertions of a Speculative Bubble [in Oil Prices]
• The Bailout Act, Amended
• Bankers
• Bankers’ Chutzpah
• The Big Lie about Free Trade
• Bonus Lessons
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• Breaking Bankers’ Death Grip on Our Global Economy
• Breaking Up is Easy To Do
• Brexit in World-Historical Perspective
• Can the “Bums” Win Again?
• Can Europe Help Save Us?
• Can Justice do justice [in holding bankers accountable]?
• Can Markets Be Wrong?
• The Candidates’ Energy Plans I
• Can the New York Times be Saved?
• Capitalism Isn’t Broken; Wall Street Is
• Capitalism Made Simple
• Capitalism on Trial [in Libya]
• The Casinos Won, so Buckle Your Seat Belts
• Cell-Phone Risk
• Cheap Culture
• China Rising III: America and China in Crisis
• Clear Thinking about “Free Trade”
• Coal: Faust’s Fate Come to Life
• Coercive Capitalism [and raising the minimum wage]
• Coming Unglued [Our Gaming Financial Sector]
• Commodities Today: How to Make a Bad Situation Much, Much Worse
• Comparative Energy Costs of Driving, Updated: Cents per Mile [12/2013]
• “Computers” and Other Anachronisms, or Whither Apple and China?
• Confessions of a Cockeyed Optimist
• Consequences [of Going over the so-called “Fiscal Cliff”]
• Conservation of Money, or Why the Fed Should Manage Derivatives
• Coussoule and Boehner, A Comparison
• Creative Destruction
• A Critical Year End
• “Daddy! Mommy! I want more oil!”
• The Deal [Avoiding Debt-Default, 2011]
• Decentralization
• The Decline of Competence in America
• To Default, or Not to Default: The Political Angle
• Defending the Indefensible [The adversary system moving beyond its Peter Principle]
• “The Defiant Ones”
• Dexia = AIG Redux, or Einstein’s Definition of Insanity
• The Dilbert Effect, or Don’t Knock Hope
• A Double Dip?
• The Double-Dip Scenario
• Do We Look Stupid?
• A Dozen Reasons for a Global Bear Market
• The Dumbing of America [decline in education]
• Dystopia
• The Effect of the Civil War in Libya [on Oil Prices]
• Embracing “Corporate Governance” and the TPP [Effective government by corporations]
• Energy Economics
• Europe’s New Bailout Plan
• Excising our Metastatic Cancer of Finance: Temporary Market-Based Nationalization
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• Fear, Delusion and Their Antidote
• Fear Itself
• Financial Stampedes: Positive Feedback inside the “Invisible Hand”
• The First 200 Days: Fourteen Priorities
• The First Big Mistake
• “Fiscal Cliff” or Briar Patch?
• Five Economic Lies
• Flirting with the Devil [and a US Default]
• Foreign Affairs: They Matter Much More Than You Think
• The Forgetful Inventor, Whom Others Are Passing By
• Fossil Fuels: the Case for Divesting
• Four Dollars a Gallon by Next Summer
• The Four Top Economies: A Goldilocks Tale
• France and Germany versus the [American] Psychopaths
• The Future of Nuclear Power
• Gang Rule, or Government by Extortion
• GDP for Obama
• GDP for Obama II, and Who’s Really a “Taker”
• Geithner’s Outline Gets “D” for Accountability
• Germany and America I
• Germany and America II: Could it Happen Here?
• Getting Smart
• The Good News from Sendai and Tokyo
• The GOP’s Five Big Lies
• Gripping Political Theater [in Debt-Default Endgame]
• Grover Norquist’s World: Indentured Servitude for Youth
• Health-Insurance Basics
• Health Insurance That Isn’t
• Hillary-ous Economics
• How the Bankers Got Away, and How to Stop Them Next Time
• How the Dow’s Drop May Save Us
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• How to Make Solar Power Seem Expensive When it Isn’t
• How Near-Term Energy Policy Could Make or Break Us
• How our Eleven Big Yankee Problems Still Fester
• How Republican Ideology Destroyed America’s Competitiveness
  and Sapped Her Strength
• How Rick Santelli Killed the Housing Rescue
• Human Perfectibility and Social Engineering: Candide, Yellen and the Pope
• Ideological Mirror Images and Olympic Lessons
• IKEA goes solar! [But only in Britain]
• Immigrants, Alpha Males, and America’s Three Cultures
• An Immodest Proposal, or Flying 2015
• In Bed with Boehner [On Summers and Geithner]
• Infrastructure, Industrial Policy, and Economic Recovery
• Innumeracy, Economics and the Great Accommodation
• “Intelligent Design” and Engineering: A Tale of Orwellian Word Theft
• Is Chicken Little Wrong? [The economics of default brinksmanship]
• Is Facebook Doing Us In?
• Update 3/16/15: is the “wage-price spiral” dead?
• “I’ve Got Mine, Jack!”: The American Recipe for Dystopia
• Janet Yellen: Yankee Philosopher Queen
• John Boehner
• Jon Huntsman: A Good Man Ignored
• Keeping Good Jobs at Home I: Tax Concessions and Subsidies
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• Keystone: An Engineering and Economic Atrocity
• Krugman, Reason and Culture [and their Effects on National Default]
• Krugman Redux
• Lack of Imagination II: Making the Volt Succeed
• Lack of Imagination III: Selling Engineering, for a Change
• Lessons of the Great BP Oil Spill
• Life after Brexit
• Lizard Brains and New Drug Pricing [absence of practical restraint on drug prices]
• Lloyd Blankfein, Bashar Al-Assad, and the Pope
• Mad Money Men Mayhem
• Market Adaptation to Climate Imperatives
• Market Manipulation in the Third Millennium
• Midterm Aftermath: Diagnosis and Prognosis
• Mirror of Tragedy
• Mitch’s Desperate Gambit [to Prevent Default]
• Money, money everywhere but not enough to spend [The causes of universal deflation]
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Motivation and the “Fiscal Cliff”
• A Multipolar World
• Luffing Time
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Missing the Point, Again and Again [Energy Infrastructure]
• Mortgages, Law and Culture, or Why Plato Still Matters
• Natural Gas: the Best Transitional Fuel
• Nervous Nellies
• A New Prediction for Oil and Gasoline Pricing [4/15]
• The New Royalists (and the New Guillotines)
• Not a “Moon Shot”—Not Even Close
• Obama’s and Clinton’s Health-Care Plans
• Obama’s Blueprint for Tomorrow
• Obama’s Energy Mistake
• Obama's Health-Care Plan
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• Obama’s Velvet Glove
• “Occupy Wall Street” Movement: Initial Information
• Only Shock Therapy Will Do
• An Open Letter to the President [re Tax Cuts]
• An Opportunity for Democrats
• “Our gall is not like your gall.”
• Our Global Paradigm Shift
• Our New Long, Twilight Struggle
• Our New Serfs
• Our Republican Platform (Pledge to America)
• Our Solar Array
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• Our Woebegone Banks
• The “Panama Papers”
• Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize
• Paul Ryan as Sidekick: What It Means
• Paulson’s Latest Egg
• The Physics-Economics of Solar Panels
• Possible International “Trade” in Wind and Solar Power
• The President’s Speech
• The Proper Response [to Near-Shutdown of Government] is Rage
• Putting a Price on Obstructionism
• Race for the Future
• Real Incentives for Private Job Creation
• Real Solar Energy Cost Parameters
• A Real Solution to our Mortgage Crisis
• Recovery by the Numbers
• Reds on the Right
• The “Rescue” Act: First Impressions
• Response to CJCalgirl [on Corporations and Corruption]
• Resurrecting Securitization
• Revolt of the Experts
• Rick Wagoner and Our Culture of Incompetence
• The Right Kind of Decoupling
• Rotten Business
• Rube Goldberg Machines on Our Streets
• Saving the Big Three [Car Makers]
• Saving the Big Three II: Accountability
• Saving the Global Middle Class
• A Season for Workers?
• The SEC’s Suit against Goldman, Sachs: What it Means
• A Second Great Depression
• Selfishness is Not a Plan
• Selling Below Cost
• Should Geitner Go?
• Shock Therapy Now
• Size Matters
• Smugness and the New Feudalism
• Solar Photovoltaic Energy: Real Cost Accounting FAQs
• Solar PV Energy: Cheapest Now, and Even Cheaper Soon
• Some Good News amongst the Bad: the Iran Talks and Atlantic Oil and Gas
• Soothing: The Last Debate
• Snap!
• Stalin in America? [comparing Boehner]
• State of the Union [2011]
• Straight Talk about Value [of Stocks versus Bonds]
• The Summers/Geithner Team: Obama’s McNamara or Rumsfeld?
• Survivor’s Guilt and What to Do about It
• Tax Cuts for the Rich: A Disastrous Blunder
• Tax Cuts for the Rich and DADT: Two Litmus Tests
• Tax Phobia
• Teaching the Retarded [about the GOP's Real Goals]
• Thank You, Iowa, and Hello Huntsman
• Thinking Outside the Box: A Zero Capital-Gains Tax
• Time to Twist Arms
• Three Big Health-Care Lies
• Trade
• Trade, Economics and Ancient Rome
• Trade Policy for One: Saying “No” to Modern Mercantilism
• Twelve Republican Stupidities [in Debt-Reduction Extortion]
• Two Banking Myths
• Underestimating the Task and the President (or Krugman At It Again)
• Universal Economic Education: Wising Up
• Update on Oil and Gasoline Price Projections
• U.S. Industrial Policy: “Cash for Clunkers” and Cap & Trade
• Us Against Them
• Versailles or the Marshall Plan: China’s Choice
• Vital Numbers
• Wall Street Journal Buys Into Electric Cars
• Watching the Sun Set [on the American Century]
• What the EU and the Eurozone Really Mean
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• Whither the Renminbi? Two Neglected Factors
• Why 2008 Was Not 1929 Redux
• Why China Wants Us to Know it is Spying
• Why Germany’s Bet on Renewables Will Win Big
• Why McCain’s Foreclosure “Rescue” Won’t Work, and What Will
• Why the New $800 Billion Bailout is a Non-Starter
• Why Obama Should Win (and Why I’m Donating Again)
• Why Our Pentagon Must Slim Down
• Why “we the people” hate some bankers
• Coda: the Wild Card of Climate Change [Effect on bond markets]
• Young People, Please Save Us (and Yourselves) Again!
• Zucotti Park, or the Power of Numbers

Energy Policy [see also, Global Warming]

• New Energy Series [and Mini-Index to Past Posts, 2/25/12]
• Addendum on Energy Independence
• Al Gore’s Energy Challenge
• Assertions of a Speculative Bubble [in Oil Prices]
• The Big Lie about Wind and Solar Power
• The Big Saudi Oil Questions
• California’s EPA Waiver
• The Candidates’ Energy Plans I
• Capitalism on Trial [in Libya]
• Coal: Faust’s Fate Come to Life
• Coal versus Nuclear Power: Do You Like to Breathe?
• Comparative Energy Costs of Driving: Cents per Mile
• Comparative Energy Costs of Driving, Updated: Cents per Mile [12/2013]
• Coussoule and Boehner, A Comparison
• A Critical Year End
• “Daddy! Mommy! I want more oil!”
• The Dangerous Illusion of “Clean Coal”
• Doha Oil, Nerve Gas, and Iran’s Nukes: Trusting your Rivals, and Russia’s Role
• Early Dog Days
• Eden or the Fall: for Real This time
• The Effect of the Civil War in Libya [on Oil Prices]
• The Electric-Car Paradigm Shift
• Energy Economics
• Energy Independence: The Proper Role of Coal
• Energy Policy: Good Batteries and How to Get Them
• Energy Policy: A Matter of Planning
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• The First 200 Days: Fourteen Priorities
• The First Big Mistake
• The Forgetful Inventor, Whom Others Are Passing By
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• Fossil Fuels: the Case for Divesting
• Four Dollars a Gallon by Next Summer
• The Future of Nuclear Power
• The Future of Nuclear Power after Fukushima
• Geography is Destiny
• Graphical Extrapolation of Gasoline Prices: Six or Seven Dollars a Gallon in Ten Years
• How to Make Solar Power Seem Expensive When it Isn’t
• How Electric Cars Can Beat their Gasoline and Natural-Gas Rivals
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• How Near-Term Energy Policy Could Make or Break Us
• How our Eleven Big Yankee Problems Still Fester
• IKEA goes solar! [But only in Britain]
• Infrastructure, Industrial Policy, and Economic Recovery
• Innumeracy, Economics and the Great Accommodation
• It’s a Tesla Model X! [that I’m buying]
• Japan’s Nuclear Disaster: Reason for Hope
• John Boehner
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• Keystone: An Engineering and Economic Atrocity
• Lack of Imagination II: Making the Volt Succeed
• Lack of Imagination III: Selling Engineering, for a Change
• Lessons of the Great BP Oil Spill
• Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors
• A Loser’s Confession
• Market Adaptation to Climate Imperatives
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Missing the Point, Again and Again [Energy Infrastructure]
• Mr. Reid, Back Down!
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Natural Gas: the Best Transitional Fuel
• Nervous Nellies
• A New Environmental Vision
• A New Prediction for Oil and Gasoline Pricing [4/15]
• Not a “Moon Shot”—Not Even Close
• Nuclear Corruption
• Nuclear-Plant Terrorism: A Solvable Problem
• Obama’s Energy Mistake
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• Obama’s Velvet Glove
• An Open Letter to Republicans in Congress
• Our Banks, Our Media, Oil and War
• Our Solar Array
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• The Physics-Economics of Solar Panels
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• Possible International “Trade” in Wind and Solar Power
• The President’s Climate-Survival Speech: An Adult in a Marvel-Comix Culture
• Putting a Price on Obstructionism
• Race for the Future
• Real Solar Energy Cost Parameters
• Reds on the Right
• Redundancy
• Response to CJCalgirl
• Saving Harbin from Coal Smog
• Selling Below Cost
• Shale or “Fracked” Gas: An Interim Solution?
• Solar Car Payback
• Solar Photovoltaic Energy: Real Cost Accounting FAQs
• Solar PV Energy: Cheapest Now, and Even Cheaper Soon
• A Solution to Our Energy Crisis: The Chevy Volt
• Some Good News amongst the Bad: the Iran Talks and Atlantic Oil and Gas
• State of the Union [2011]
• Tax Cuts for the Rich: A Disastrous Blunder
• Ten Encouraging Facts [About Non-Carbon Energy]
• Update on Global Warming (4/28/15) [Effect on heat waves and extreme weather]
• Update on Oil and Gasoline Price Projections
• Update on Oil Prices and Electric Cars [4/15]
• Vital Numbers
• Vive Hillary and Vive La France! [Introduction]
• Wall Street Journal Buys Into Electric Cars
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• “When Donkeys Fly": Steven Chu’s Energy Plans
• Who Should Drive Electric Cars
• Why Are We Still in Iraq?
• Why Cars and Trucks Should Switch to Natural Gas Now
• Why Germany’s Bet on Renewables Will Win Big
• Why I’ll Buy a Volt
• Why I’ll Buy a Volt II
• Why Obama Should Win (and Why I’m Donating Again)

Faith and Public Policy

• Abortion
• Bans on Gay Marriage: A Question of Values
• A Christmas Message of Love
• Coda: the Divinity that Hinders [of Jesus]
• Eden or the Fall: for Real This time
• The Explainers [Catholics and Jews]
• Germany and America III: Following Jesus’ Advice
• The Indispensable Man
• “Intelligent Design” and Engineering: A Tale of Orwellian Word Theft
• Looking for God in a Godless World
• Muhammad Ali Obituary
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• Obama and Evangelicals
• Our Global Moral Crisis
• A Papal Lesson in Humility
• The Real Antichrists
• A Tale of Two Cities
• A Time of Reverence and Awe
• True Believers and the
  Power of Nations
• Who is Islam’s Best Friend?
• Why the “Defense of Marriage” Act is Inhuman, not Just Inhumane

Foreign Affairs

  International Trade

• The Big Lie about Free Trade
• Brexit in World-Historical Perspective
• Clear Thinking about “Free Trade”
• A Dozen Reasons for a Global Bear Market
• Elizabeth Warren’s response to the President [on the TPP]
• Embracing “Corporate Governance” and the TPP [Effective government by corporations]
• The Four Top Economies: A Goldilocks Tale
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• How Republican Ideology Destroyed America’s Competitiveness and Sapped Her Strength
• Is Fast Track Constitutional?
• Keeping Good Jobs at Home I: Tax Concessions and Subsidies
• Life after Brexit
• Our Global Paradigm Shift
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• Saving the Big Three [Car Makers]
• Saving the Global Middle Class
• Selling Below Cost
• Smugness and the New Feudalism
• The TPP Debacle
• Trade
• Trade, Economics and Ancient Rome
• Trade Policy for One: Saying “No” to Modern Mercantilism
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• Why the TPP’s “Pay for Rules” Provision Must Go

  Other General Topics

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• America is Back!
• Of Apes and Men
• The Banality of Evil
• Build or Bomb?
• The Case for Nuclear Proliferation
• Childish Things
• A Christmas Message of Love
• Clear Thinking about “Terrorism”
• Confessions of a Cockeyed Optimist
• Darfur
• Dog-Day Food for Thought: Who Has the Best Alphabet?
• Ecclesiastes and the EU
• Egypt’s Trials: More Common than You Think
• Fidel: Lord Acton’s Ultimate Proof
• Foreign Affairs: They Matter Much More Than You Think
• Foreign Wars and Domestic Politics
• Fossil Fuels: the Case for Divesting
• The Good News from Sendai and Tokyo
• Hillary Clinton: A Bad Idea Then, a Bad Idea Now
• How Not to Beat Ebola
• How our Eleven Big Yankee Problems Still Fester
• Huntsman at State?
• That Idiot Rumsfeld
• The Infamous 47: “Traitors,” “Bad Cops,” or Communicators?
• In Myths and Rumors Credimus
• Individual Responsibility: the Salvation of our Species?
• Iran’s Second Revolution: the First Cyber War
• Islamophobia: Three Lies
• John, Bibi, Mitch and Vlad: Dead-End Pols
• John McCain (and Arizona) at the Crossroads
• The Leader [USA] Falls
• Lessons from "Honor" Killings in Germany
• Mad Money Men Mayhem
• Magna Carta at 800: A Global Teachable Moment
• Mandela’s “Miracle”: Empathy and Perseverance
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• A Multipolar World
• Naming (and Ending) Our Endless Wars
• Nelson “Madiba” Mandela [Eulogy]
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• A New Environmental Vision
• No-Bluff Obama
• Obama’s Meritocracy
• Our Big Foreign-Policy Blunders, and our New Opportunities
• Our Global Moral Crisis
• Our Modern Ninjas and Their Role in Human History
• Our Species: Which Leaders? (A Visual Essay)
• The “Panama Papers”
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• Possible International “Trade” in Wind and Solar Power
• The President’s OAS Diplomacy
• A Prose Ode to Female Leaders
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Proving Dratler’s Law
• Putin’s Ploy: Leaders Speaking to Other Peoples
• Repentance
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• Sarah Palin II: The Demise of American Democracy?
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Size Matters
• Susan Rice at State
• Three Global Threats to Democracy [no term limits, leaders who won’t leave, and propaganda]
• Trade
• The Transcendent Need for Real Talent at State
• Tribalism Gone Wild [Analysis of Saudi Wahhabi Tribalism and its Consequences]
• Twenty Minutes that could Change War Forever
• Vive Paris! [for suing Fox]
• What is “Nazism”?
• What Politicians Do When Reality Intervenes
• Why 2008 Was Not 1929 Redux
• Why Judgment Matters
• Why Hillary is Dangerous I: Foreign and Military Policy
• War Against War
• We Just Didn’t Know [about the causes of our foreign-policy blunders]
• What the EU and the Eurozone Really Mean
• Why Do We Need Armed Forces?

  Afghanistan and Pakistan

• Afghanistan
• Apocalypticism, or Dominoes Redux
• Bin Laden Dead
• Common Sense About Pakistan
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Ending the Not-War War
• Five Conditions for Taliban Rule
• Independence Day
• In Praise of Gates
• Islamophobia: Three Lies
• Just War
• Military Secrecy: Still Useful after All These Years
• Naming (and Ending) Our Endless Wars
• Object Lessons for Foreign Wars
• Pakistan: A New Policy
• [Our Errors in Pakistan]
• Pakistan
• Pakistan’s Potential
• President Obama’s War Speech
• Response to David Brooks’ Column of 9/25/09 [on Afghanistan]
• Timing is Everything [in Afghanistan]
• A Turning in Waziristan

  Arabian/Islamic Liberation (See also Libya)

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• Arab Liberation: Another Cold War Ending?
• Arab Liberation: Which Side Are We On?
• The Arab Spring, Ten Months In
• Bin Laden Dead
• Capitalism on Trial [in Libya]
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Egypt’s Talks with Hamas and Iran
• Egypt’s Trials: More Common than You Think
• Heroism in Libya [Coda]
• Futurophobia
• Genocide in Arabia
• Hard Bargaining in Egypt
• Help Wanted: Leader for Libya
• Holocaust Memorial Day
• I Am Egyptian
• Individual Responsibility: the Salvation of our Species?
• Is Libya Lost?
• Lack of Imagination IV: Technologies of Freedom
• Learning to Trust Libya’s Rebels
• Libya for the Libyans
• The Libya Kerfluffle [in the 2012 campaign]
• Lloyd Blankfein, Bashar Al-Assad, and the Pope
• Metrojet Flight 9268: the Price of Tyranny?
• Mohamed Mursi, Elected President of Egypt
• Ordinary People Matter
• Playing Chess with Putin, Syria and Iran
• Runnymede in Tripoli
• Rx for Syria: Stopping Air Attacks on Civilians and Cities
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Should Crazy People Have Nuclear Weapons?
• Should Russia Invade Syria?
• Syria
• Syria: Don’t Do it, Mr. President! [re punitive strike for chemical-weapons use]
• Syria: Jihadi Armageddon?
• Strange Sympathies [for Islamists in Egypt]
• Tom Friedman’s Western Hubris
• What If We Are Wrong [about Arabs’ and Muslims’ Capacity for Self-Government]?
• Vive Hillary and Vive La France!
• The War We Really Have to Win
• Who is Islam’s Best Friend?
• Why An American Jew Supports Palestinian Statehood

  Bush Administration

• 9/11 After Seven
• The Banality of Evil
• Benching the Star Quarterback
• The Bolton Nomination
• Law and Justice
• Lieutenant Ehren Watada
• Response to David Brooks’ Column of 9/25/09 [on Afghanistan]
• The Rumsfeld Memo
• Smarter People, Better Results
• The Transcendent Need for Real Talent at State

  China

• China Rising I
• China Rising II: The Hantsu Hypothesis
• China Rising III: America and China in Crisis
• “Computers” and Other Anachronisms, or Whither Apple and China?
• Dog-Day Food for Thought: Who Has the Best Alphabet?
• John, Bibi, Mitch and Vlad: Dead-End Pols
• Nuclear Corruption
• Only Shock Therapy Will Do
• Our New Long, Twilight Struggle
• Saving Harbin from Coal Smog
• Survivor’s Guilt and What to Do about It
• Trade Policy for One: Saying “No” to Modern Mercantilism
• Three Global Threats to Democracy [no term limits, leaders who won’t leave, and propaganda]
• Two Gathering Storms
• Versailles or the Marshall Plan: China’s Choice
• We Just Didn’t Know [about the causes of our foreign-policy blunders]
• Whither the Renminbi? Two Neglected Factors
• Why China Wants Us to Know it is Spying

  Diplomacy

• Arrogance and Humility
• Build or Bomb?
• The “Deal” with Iran
• Don’t be Fooled by Name Dropping
• Fidel: Lord Acton’s Ultimate Proof
• The Great Debate
• Hillary Clinton’s First Big Test [in Libya]
• The Infamous 47: “Traitors,” “Bad Cops,” or Communicators?
• Lack of Imagination IV: Technologies of Freedom
• Letter to Representatives in Congress on Deal with Iran
• Mandela’s “Miracle”: Empathy and Perseverance
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Naming (and Ending) Our Endless Wars
• Nelson “Madiba” Mandela [Eulogy]
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• Our Big Foreign-Policy Blunders, and our New Opportunities
• Our Modern Ninjas and Their Role in Human History
• Pakistan
• President Obama’s War Speech
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Putin’s Ploy: Leaders Speaking to Other Peoples
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• Some Good News amongst the Bad: the Iran Talks and Atlantic Oil and Gas
• Stiff-Necked Diplomacy
• The War We Really Have to Win
• We Just Didn’t Know [about the causes of our foreign-policy blunders]
• What’s At Stake In Iran
• Who is Islam’s Best Friend?

  The European Union

• Brexit: A Letter from the “Lower Classes”
• Brexit in World-Historical Perspective
• Can Europe Help Save Us?
• The Casinos Won, so Buckle Your Seat Belts
• Dexia = AIG Redux, or Einstein’s Definition of Insanity
• Ecclesiastes and the EU
• Short Subject: Europe Rising
• Europe’s New Bailout Plan
• Germany and America I
• Germany and America III: Following Jesus’ Advice
• Keeping Good Jobs at Home I: Tax Concessions and Subsidies
• Life after Brexit
• The New Royalists (and the New Guillotines)
• “Old Europe”
• Repentance
• Russia and NATO
• A Second Great Depression
• Understanding Ukraine
• Coda: Ukrainian Pols
• Us Against Them
• Vive Paris! [for suing Fox]
• What the EU and the Eurozone Really Mean
• What is “Nazism”?
• Why Germany’s Bet on Renewables Will Win Big

  Iran

• Ahmadinejad Speaks?
• Avoiding World War III
• The Big Saudi Oil Questions
• Bin Laden Dead
• Breaking the Nuclear Taboo: Another Risk of Iran Going Nuclear
• Build or Bomb?
• The Case for Nuclear Proliferation
• Common Sense and Iran
• Dark Chickens Coming Home to Roost [a changed Putin and a possible general war in the Middle East]
• The “Deal” with Iran
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Doha Oil, Nerve Gas, and Iran’s Nukes: Trusting your Rivals, and Russia’s Role
• A Good Three Weeks for Our Species [7/15]
• The Infamous 47: “Traitors,” “Bad Cops,” or Communicators?
• Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Poor Choice of Friends
• Iran Policy
• Iran: the Real Paper Tiger
• Iran's Christmas Present and the Future
• Iran’s Second Revolution: the First Cyber War
• Iran: What’s Next and How We Can Help [6/19/2009]
• Kim's Gambit and Iran
• Letter to Representatives in Congress on Deal with Iran
• A Maginot Line for Missiles
• Obama on Iran: The Adult in the Room
• Our Banks, Our Media, Oil and War
• Our Big Foreign-Policy Blunders, and our New Opportunities
• Parsing Iran’s Goals and Intentions
• Persia’s Bush
• Playing Chess with Putin, Syria and Iran
• The President’s Nuclear “Deal” with Congress [about Iran]
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Should Crazy People Have Nuclear Weapons?
• Should Russia Invade Syria?
• Some Good News amongst the Bad: the Iran Talks and Atlantic Oil and Gas
• Three Global Threats to Democracy [no term limits, leaders who won’t leave, and propaganda]
• A Time of Reverence and Awe
• Two Gathering Storms
• The War We Really Have to Win
• We Just Didn’t Know [about the causes of our foreign-policy blunders]
• What Is Bibi Up To?
• What’s At Stake In Iran

  Iraq

• After the Iraqi Elections: Our Choice Now
• The Arab Spring, Ten Months In
• A Chance for Success in Baghdad?
• A Closing Circle of Stupidity [our many blunders in Iraq]
• Cut and Stay: A Strategy for Iraq
• Dark Chickens Coming Home to Roost [a changed Putin and a possible general war in the Middle East]
• Frontline on Iraq: Feeding Yankee Paranoia
• That Idiot Rumsfeld
• The Indispensable Man [Al Sistani]
• Iraq: a Western Chimera
• Iraq and November [2008]
• Iraq and Our Elections
• Iraq Now is Neither Syria nor Libya Then
• Iraqi Provincial Elections: A Game Changer
• Iraq’s Future
• Iraq's Last Chance
• Is Iraq Irretrievably Lost?
• Killed for a Photo Op
• Lieutenant Ehren Watada
• A Mini Marshall Plan for Shiite Iraq
• More on Iraq’s Future
• Naming (and Ending) Our Endless Wars
• Object Lessons for Foreign Wars
• Our Second False Premise
• Our War in the Shadows: Can we Succeed by Withdrawing?
• A Real Benchmark for Leaving Iraq
• Sahel or Partition: Take Your Pick
• A Salute to Senator Lugar
• Senator Clinton's Plan
• Senator Clinton's Political Epitaph
• The Turning Point?
• The War We Really Have to Win
• Who Bombed the Golden Dome?
• Why Are We Still in Iraq?
• Why Hawks Should Cheer the Antiwar Left
• Why "We" Just Might Win

  Islamic State [new 10/5/14]

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• A Closing Circle of Stupidity [our many blunders in Iraq]
• Dark Chickens Coming Home to Roost [a changed Putin and a possible general war in the Middle East]
• Frontline on Iraq: Feeding Yankee Paranoia
• Getting IS’ Fingers Off our Pulse [The Orlando Massacre]
• Iraq Now is Neither Syria nor Libya Then
• The War We Really Have to Win
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Syria: Colin Powell’s Solution

  Israel

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• Avoiding World War III
• Bin Laden Dead
• Build or Bomb?
• Carter and Hamas
• The Case for Nuclear Proliferation
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Facing Reality [re Hamas]
• “I Don’t Want to Think About It!”
• John, Bibi, Mitch and Vlad: Dead-End Pols
• A New Dawn: Obama in Cairo
• Obama on Iran: The Adult in the Room
• Parsing Iran’s Goals and Intentions
• Should Crazy People Have Nuclear Weapons?
• Two Gathering Storms
• What Is Bibi Up To?
• Why An American Jew Supports Palestinian Statehood

  Libya

• Capitalism on Trial [in Libya]
• The Effect of the Civil War in Libya [on Oil Prices]
• Heroism in Libya [Coda]
• Hillary Clinton’s First Big Test
• Iraq Now is Neither Syria nor Libya Then
• Learning to Trust Libya’s Rebels
• Picking a New Leader for Libya
• Vive Hillary and Vive La France!

  North Korea

• Kim's Gambit and Iran
• The Korean Philosopher’s Dilemma
• North Korea: A Test of Emotional Intelligence
• Two Generations of Imbecile-Dictators Are Enough

  Al Qaeda

• The Arab Spring, Ten Months In
• 47 Million Uninsured: A National-Security Risk
• Bin Laden Dead
• The Case for Nuclear Proliferation
• Childish Things
• Clintonian Heresy
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• Five Conditions for Taliban Rule
• Holder’s Decision
• Iraq Now is Neither Syria nor Libya Then
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• Lessons of 9/11, Ten Years Later
• Naming (and Ending) Our Endless Wars
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• Obama’s Terrorism Speech
• Our Modern Ninjas and Their Role in Human History
• Taking Our Worst Enemy Seriously
• Who Can Keep Us Safe?
• Plague Bioterrorism: A Sui-Genocide Bomb

  Russia

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• British Views on the Fallout from Nemtsov’s Murder
• A Chasm of Misunderstanding: Thoughts on Opening Day at Sochi
• A Christmas Message of Love
• Crimea: the Slippery-Slope Fallacy
• Crunch Time in the Caucasus
• Dark Chickens Coming Home to Roost [a changed Putin and a possible general war in the Middle East]
• The Dark Side of Ukraine, and of Western Media
• Do Those Big White [Russian] Trucks Mean War?
• Doha Oil, Nerve Gas, and Iran’s Nukes: Trusting your Rivals, and Russia’s Role
• Eastern Ukraine: No News is not Good News, Especially for Frogs
• Eastern Ukraine: One Slip Away from Syria
• Ecclesiastes and the EU
• Father Knows Best, Or Does He? [re Stalin and Dubya]
• Five Essential Truths about Russia
• Foreign Wars and Domestic Politics
• Geography is Destiny [re Georgia]
• George Washington and Vladimir Putin
• How Russia and the US Could Prevent Small-Power Nuclear Arms Races
• Ideological Mirror Images and Olympic Lessons
• Info Wars: America Comes of Age
• John, Bibi, Mitch and Vlad: Dead-End Pols
• Keeping Ukraine Whole [with finesse, not war]
• Levels of Paranoia and the “Scanner Revolt”
• Mirror of Tragedy
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Our Big Foreign-Policy Blunders, and our New Opportunities
• Our New Long, Twilight Struggle
• Metrojet Flight 9268: the Price of Tyranny?
• Playing Chess with Putin, Syria and Iran
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Is Putin a Bad Judge of Character?
• Putin at the Crossroads [of Ukraine]
• Putin’s Dangerous Game
• Putin’s Humanitarian Mission: Trust but Verify
• Putin’s Ploy: Leaders Speaking to Other Peoples
• Putin, Zubkov, and Their Lessons for Us
• Reds on the Right
• Forenote: Rose v. Putin, Great Interviewer v. Russian Communicator
• Russia’s Meddling in Our Elections: the Implications are Even Worse Than you Think
• Russia and NATO
• Russian Nazism Growing Plain
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• Saving Ukraine at the Ballot Box [from Russian meddling]
• Sevastopol and Guantánamo
• Shadow War [Cyberwarfare between Russia and US]
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Should Russia Invade Syria?
• Size Matters
• Stalin in America? [comparing Boehner]
• Stopping Putin [in Ukraine]
• “Strelkov”
• Update II (3/1/15): “Strelkov” Redux and Putin’s Flaws
• Syria: Colin Powell’s Solution
• Syria: Jihadi Armageddon?
• Three Global Threats to Democracy [no term limits, leaders who won’t leave, and propaganda]
• Ukraine and the Powell Doctrine
• Is the Ukraine Crisis Over? [after Putin’s annexation of Crimea]
• Украина --- Свободна (Ukraine is Free)
• Understanding Ukraine
• Understanding Vladimir Putin
• What is “Nazism”?
• Why Ukraine is Important
• Will Putin Trample Ukraine’s Garden?
• The World’s Most Dangerous Man [Putin]

  Saudi Arabia

• The Big Saudi Oil Questions
• Doha Oil, Nerve Gas, and Iran’s Nukes: Trusting your Rivals, and Russia’s Role
• How the House of Saud Kills Sunnis
• Iran and Saudi Arabia: A Poor Choice of Friends
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• The Shiite and Sunni Siblings
• Tribalism Gone Wild [Analysis of Saudi Wahhabi Tribalism and its Consequences]
• The War We Really Have to Win

  Syria

• The Solution to Syria: Partition

  Turkey

• Endnote on Turkey

  Ukraine

• Accurate Weapons II: Gaza, Syria and the “Donyetsk Republic”
• Crimea: the Slippery-Slope Fallacy
• Dark Chickens Coming Home to Roost [a changed Putin and a possible general war in the Middle East]
• The Dark Side of Ukraine, and of Western Media
• Do Those Big White [Russian] Trucks Mean War?
• Eastern Ukraine: No News is not Good News, Especially for Frogs
• Eastern Ukraine: One Slip Away from Syria
• Is Putin a Bad Judge of Character?
• Keeping Ukraine Whole [with finesse, not war]
• Kiev’s Difficult Task [of self-restraint]
• Lack of Imagination V: Accurate Weapons
• Organizing Ukraine’s Elections
• Putin at the Crossroads [of Ukraine]
• Putin’s Humanitarian Mission: Trust but Verify
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• Saving Ukraine at the Ballot Box [from Russian meddling]
• Sevastopol and Guantánamo
• “Strelkov”
• Ukraine and the Powell Doctrine
• Is the Ukraine Crisis Over? [after Putin’s annexation of Crimea]
• Stopping Putin [in Ukraine]
• Украина --- Свободна (Ukraine is Free)
• Understanding Ukraine
• Understanding Vladimir Putin
• Coda: Ukrainian Pols
• We Just Didn’t Know [about the causes of our foreign-policy blunders]
• What is “Nazism”?
• Why Ukraine is Important
• Will Putin Trample Ukraine’s Garden?

Gender and Sexism

• All Hail the Speaker!
• The Alpha Tribe
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• Gleams, Boos and Historical Inevitability
• Hillary 2016
• Identity Politics and the Powell Parable
• If Barack and Hillary Were White Males
• Judge Sotomayor and “Identity Politics”
• Just Like a Man
• Mars, Venus and Presidential Politics
• Michelle’s American Story
• A Prose Ode to Female Leaders
• Tax Cuts for the Rich and DADT: Two Litmus Tests

Globalization

• Of Apes and Men
• The Big Lie about Free Trade
• Brexit in World-Historical Perspective
• Clear Thinking about “Free Trade”
• Confessions of a Cockeyed Optimist
• Copyright, Globalization, and the New Roberts Court
• Foreign Wars and Domestic Politics
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• Innumeracy, Economics and the Great Accommodation
• Keeping Good Jobs at Home I: Tax Concessions and Subsidies
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Our New Serfs
• Our Species: Which Leaders? (A Visual Essay)
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• Reply to an Indian Colleague
• Saving the Global Middle Class
• Smugness and the New Feudalism
• Survivor’s Guilt and What to Do about It
• Trade
• Trade Policy for One: Saying “No” to Modern Mercantilism
• Versailles or the Marshall Plan: China’s Choice
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• Whither the Renminbi? Two Neglected Factors

Global Warming

• Trump’s Three Big Lies [so far]
• Get Ready for Noah
• Market Adaptation to Climate Imperatives
• The President’s Climate-Survival Speech: An Adult in a Marvel-Comix Culture
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• Update on Global Warming (4/28/15) [Effect on heat waves and extreme weather]
• Coda: the Wild Card of Climate Change [Effect on bond markets]

Health Care

• 47 Million Uninsured: A National-Security Risk
• Best Practices Panels
• Big Tobacco’s Just Deserts
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• Cell-Phone Risk
• Chief Justice Roberts on “Obamacare”
• The Clinton-Krugman Health-Care Swindle
• Comparing Obama: Three Essential Readings
• A Dozen Reasons for House Members to Vote for Health-Insurance Reform
• Early Dog Days
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• Faux Democracy
• Fear, Delusion and Their Antidote
• The First 200 Days: Fourteen Priorities
• Health-Insurance Basics
• Health-Insurance Quid Pro Quo
• Health-Insurance Reform on its Deathbed
• Health Insurance That Isn’t
• Hillary-ous Economics
• How Not to Beat Ebola
• How a Republican Senate Takeover Could Hurt Your Health, Literally
• Krugman Redux
• Learning to Love Logic
• The Lesson of Ebola
• Lizard Brains and New Drug Pricing [absence of practical restraint on drug prices]
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Message for the Gang of Six and the Blue Dogs
• The Morning After [Health Insurance Reform]
• Mortgages, Law and Culture, or Why Plato Still Matters
• A Sense of Perspective
• Nervous Nellies
• Obamacare, Gay Marriage and our High Court
• Obama’s and Clinton’s Health-Care Plans
• Obama's Health-Care Plan [May 2007]
• Obama’s Meritocracy
• An Open Letter to Seniors on Health-Insurance Reform
• The Public Option
• Redundancy
• Recovery by the Numbers
• Roberts Court Upholds Obamacare’s Subsidies
• Rotten Business
• Simplicity and “Obamacare”
• Six Things our President and Every Other High Executive Should Know about Websites [re healthcare.gov]
• Three Big Health-Care Lies
• Time to Twist Arms
• To Do Or Not To Do
• The War We Really Have to Win
• What To Do About Joe
• Why “Obamacare” Is Failing, and How to Make It Work

The Media and Their Performance

• Access to National “Print” Journalism in the Digital Age
• The Awful Arithmetic of Citizens United
• A Conspiracy of Silence? [About Tea Party’s Deep-South Origins]
• America’s Two Crises [Default and Murdoch]
• And you thought government was bad!
• The Bancrofts’ Big Decision
• Our Banks, Our Media, Oil and War
• Barack Obama’s Good Weekend and Sterling Endorsements
• Bye, Bye American Media, or Why I’m Dropping the New York Times
• Can Bloomberg.com succeed the Wall Street Journal Now That It’s Dead?
• Can the New York Times be Saved?
• The Continuing Subversion of “Frontline”
• The Dark Side of Ukraine, and of Western Media
• The Decline of Competence in America
• Defending the Indefensible [The adversary system moving beyond its Peter Principle]
• Eleven Questions for All Presidential Candidates
• Coda: An Exemplary Many-to-Many Online Community [Amazon.com’s product reviewers]
• First-Amendment Extremism and the Fairness Doctrine
• Five Questions for Vetting Candidates
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• Frontline on Iraq: Feeding Yankee Paranoia
• Good Media: Where to Go for Real News
• Gossip and Policy
• Gwen’s “Fireside Chat”
• Has PBS Turned to the Dark Side?
• He Did His Homework [Tim Russert]
• High Noon on PBS [Lehrer Interviews McConnell]
• The Infamous 47: “Traitors,” “Bad Cops,” or Communicators?
• “Intelligent Design” and Engineering: A Tale of Orwellian Word Theft
• Is Facebook Doing Us In?
• Jeff Bezos and the Pope
• Jon Huntsman: A Good Man Ignored
• Coda: Journalistic Malpractice [re the “Fiscal Cliff”]
• Killed for a Photo Op
• Levels of Paranoia and the “Scanner Revolt”
• Losing Our Republic: A Media Coup [over PBS]
• “The Martian”
• The Morning After [Health Insurance Reform]
• A Non-Violent Coup d’Etat [The theft of our democracy by procedural tricks]
• A Noose for America’s Middle Class
• The Obama “Referendum”
• An Open Letter to Print Journalists
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• Outrage! (The Shirley Sherrod Story)
• Paul Ryan as Sidekick: What It Means
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Random Acts of Journalism [A Critique of Modern Media]
• The Real Antichrists
• Redundancy
• Resurrecting Time
• Forenote: Rose v. Putin, Great Interviewer v. Russian Communicator
• Signs of a Sick Democracy: the First New Hampshire “Debate”
• A Snide Slander [of Pete Seeger] Unbefitting an Economist
• Susan Rice at State
• Think People, Not Ideas
• Tired of Lies
• Uncertainty and Error Bars in “News”
• Vive Paris! [for suing Fox]
• What Broke our Democracy

The Military and Intelligence

• 47 Million Uninsured: A National-Security Risk
• 9/11 After Seven
• Afghanistan
• Of Apes and Men
• Apocalypticism, or Dominoes Redux
• “Apotheosis of War” [and Southern culture]
• Arab Liberation: Another Cold War Ending?
• Avoiding World War III
• Benching the Star Quarterback [Colin Powell]
• Bin Laden Dead
• Breaking the Nuclear Taboo: Another Risk of Iran Going Nuclear
• Build or Bomb?
• The Case for Nuclear Proliferation
• Childish Things
• Civilian Control of the Military: Oversight or Micromanagement?
• Clear Thinking about “Terrorism”
• Colin Powell’s Endorsement [of President Obama]
• Common Sense about Pakistan
• Common Sense and Iran
• Confessions of a Cockeyed Optimist
• Cool
• Consequences [of Going over the so-called “Fiscal Cliff”]
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Egypt’s Talks with Hamas and Iran
• Ending the Not-War War
• Fidel: Lord Acton’s Ultimate Proof
• The First 200 Days: Fourteen Priorities
• Five Conditions for Taliban Rule
• Five Essential Truths about Russia
• Genocide in Arabia
• Getting IS’ Fingers Off our Pulse [The Orlando Massacre]
• Getting Smart
• Holder’s Decision
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Essay]
• How Long Will Global Oil Last? [Table]
• How Russia and the US Could Prevent Small-Power Nuclear Arms Races
• That Idiot Rumsfeld
• An Immodest Proposal, or Flying 2015
• In Praise of Gates
• Individual Responsibility: the Salvation of our Species?
• Info Wars: America Comes of Age
• Intelligence Does Matter
• Iran Policy
• Iraq: a Western Chimera
• Just War
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• Killed for a Photo Op
• Kim's Gambit and Iran
• The Korean Philosopher’s Dilemma
• Lack of Imagination I: Small Remotely Piloted Aircraft
• Lack of Imagination IV: Technologies of Freedom
• Lack of Imagination V: Accurate Weapons
• The Leader [USA] Falls
• Lesson from Fort Hood
• Lessons of 9/11, Ten Years Later
• Letter to Representatives in Congress on Deal with Iran
• Levels of Paranoia and the “Scanner Revolt”
• Lieutenant Ehren Watada
• A Maginot Line for Missiles
• The Marathon Bombers: Alpha Males Lost in Modern Civilization?
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Military Secrecy: Still Useful after All These Years
• A Moral Equivalent of War, or Why Oil Prices Dropped so Rapidly
• Mitt’s War Risk
• North Korea: A Test of Emotional Intelligence
• Obama on Iran: The Adult in the Room
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• Object Lessons for Foreign Wars
• One of Us
• Our Banks, Our Media, Oil and War
• Our Modern Ninjas and Their Role in Human History
• Our New Long, Twilight Struggle
• Our Species: Which Leaders? (A Visual Essay)
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• Pakistan
• Pakistan: A New Policy
• Parsing Iran’s Goals and Intentions
• President Obama’s War Speech
• The President’s Nuclear “Deal” with Congress [about Iran]
• Response to David Brooks’ Column of 9/25/09 [on Afghanistan]
• The Rumsfeld Memo
• Russia and NATO
• Rx for Syria: Stopping Air Attacks on Civilians and Cities
• Sanctions: Deterrence or Punishment?
• SecDef Gates Speaks Out [on Missile Defense]
• The “Second-Amendment Solution”
• Sevastopol and Guantánamo
• Shadow War [Cyberwarfare between Russia and US]
• Should Crazy People Have Nuclear Weapons?
• Smarter People, Better Results
• Stopping Putin [in Ukraine]
• Syria
• Syria: Don’t Do it, Mr. President! [re punitive strike for chemical-weapons use]
• Syria: Jihadi Armageddon?
• Taking Our Worst Enemy Seriously
• Timing is Everything [in Afghanistan]
• Trade
• A Turning in Waziristan
• Twenty Minutes that could Change War Forever
• Two Generations of Imbecile-Dictators Are Enough
• Ukraine and the Powell Doctrine
• War Against War
• The War We Really Have to Win
• Was Orwell Right?
• What If We Are Wrong [about Arabs’ and Muslims’ Capacity for Self-Government]?
• What Will Oil Prices Do Now? [After January 2015]
• Who Bombed the Golden Dome?
• Who Can Keep Us Safe?
• The World’s Most Dangerous Man [Putin]
• Why China Wants Us to Know it is Spying
• Why Do We Need Armed Forces?
• Why Judgment Matters
• Why Our Pentagon Must Slim Down

Politics

  2017
• Anti-Nepotism Laws and the Trump Family
• Block Jeff Sessions [from becoming AG]
• “Fake news”: Democracy’s Hemlock
• Five Essential Truths about Russia
• General Overview [of Trump’s Team]
• Grading Trump’s Presidency: Benchmarks
• Info Wars: America Comes of Age
• Losing Our Republic: A Media Coup [over PBS]
• MLK Day 2017
• President Trump: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
• Russia’s Meddling in Our Elections: the Implications are Even Worse Than you Think
• Shadow War [Cyberwarfare between Russia and US]
• Trump’s Four Tribes
• Trump’s Inauguration
• Trump’s Team
• Trump’s Three Big Lies [so far]
• Working with Trump

  2016
• Bernie and “Black” Votes
• The Big Lie about Free Trade
• Black Lives Matter: The White Pledge
• Bland v. Bland? [Thoughts on Rubio versus Hillary]
• Brexit: A Letter from the “Lower Classes”
• Brexit in World-Historical Perspective
• Endnote: bringing back smoke-filled rooms
• Building Democracy I: Helping Youth Vote
• Can Bernie Win?
• Can the Dems “Pull a Reagan” in 2016?
• The Carly Simon Video on Donald
• Clear Thinking about “Free Trade”
• Could Trump Win?
• The Death of “Conservatism”?
• Decision Time, Except for Trumpets
• The Dems’ Brooklyn Debate
• The Dems’ Convention
• The Dems’ Last Debate [before Iowa & N.H.]
• The Dems’ March 6 Debate
• The Dems’ Pre-New Hampshire Debate
• The Dems’ Post-New Hampshire Debate
• The Dumbing of America [decline in education]
• Eight Reasons for Bernie to Go the Distance
• Eleven Reasons to Vote for Hillary and Downballot Dems
• The Empathy Gap
• Coda: the False Equivalence [between Hillary’s and Trump’s high negatives]
• Female Leaders
• The First “Great” [Hillary-Donald] Debate
• Five Reasons why Herr Drumpf will not be President
• Foreign Wars and Domestic Politics
• Getting IS’ Fingers Off our Pulse [The Orlando Massacre]
• Gut Level [issue presentation]
• Halfway There [to a three-branch sweep for Hillary]
• Hillary and the Banks [How Hillary’s treatment of Wall Street Hurts Her Campaign]
• Hillary’s Fatal Need to be Loved
• Hillary’s Hidden Virtues [and early voting]
• Hillary’s Promise
• Gwen’s “Fireside Chat”
• Heed Michelle, Hillary!
• Jeff Sessions: Trump’s First Big Mistake
• Keeping Good Jobs at Home I: Tax Concessions and Subsidies
• Man Hoo Kwong, or Why We Yanks Need More, not Fewer, Immigrants
• Martin and Bernie
• Michelle’s Second Blockbuster [speech]
• Misdirected “Populism,” and How to Fix It
• The New GOP Disinformation Campaign
• Nilhil nisi bonum (mi primero aporte en Español) [Comment on Scalia’s Death]
• The October Surprise
• Our New Serfs
• The “Panama Papers”
• The Queen and Don
• Random Acts of Journalism [A Critique of Modern Media]
• Rehabilitating Hillary
• Saving the Global Middle Class
• The Second Presidential Debate
• Six Things Bernie Should Say
• Smugness and the New Feudalism
• “Stronger Together!” [Bernie, Hillary and Obama]
• Tim Kaine: A Risky Choice for Veep
• The Transgender Bathroom Wars
• Trump and Conflicts of Interest
• The Trump Convention
• Trump’s Reality Show
• [Trump’s] Extremist Die is Cast
• Trump: Theft of a Generational Fraud
• Uncertainty and Error Bars in “News”
• Which Side Are You On? [How to make your decision matter]
• Why “we the people” hate some bankers

  2015
• “Apotheosis of War” [and Southern culture]
• Assassinations and Yankee History
• Bernie’s Moment, and His Test
• Bernie’s Night [his win in October debate]
• Build or Bomb?
• Can Hillary Win?
• Capitalism Made Simple
• The Charleston Massacre
• The “Deal” with Iran
• Defending the Indefensible [The adversary system moving beyond its Peter Principle]
• The Dems’ Saturday-Night Debate [in November]
• The Delayed Transition at Justice [Eric Holder’s Departure]
• Donald Trump’s Blood Libel
• Elizabeth Warren’s response to the President [on the TPP]
• Embracing “Corporate Governance” and the TPP [Effective government by corporations]
• The Explainers [Catholics and Jews]
• First-Amendment Extremism and the Fairness Doctrine
• The Four Top Economies: A Goldilocks Tale
• A Good Three Weeks for Our Species [7/15]
• How Russia and the US Could Prevent Small-Power Nuclear Arms Races
• The Infamous 47: “Traitors,” “Bad Cops,” or Communicators?
• Is Fast Track Constitutional?
• John, Bibi, Mitch and Vlad: Dead-End Pols
• John Kerry, a Hero Yet Unsung
• John Kerry and Why Culture Matters
• Julian Bond
• Letter to Representatives in Congress on Deal with Iran
• Money, money everywhere but not enough to spend [The causes of universal deflation]
• A National Convalescence? [from extreme politics]
• A Nation of Boors
• Obamacare, Gay Marriage and our High Court
• Politics 2016: Jeb, GOP Reform, and Hillary’s Blunder
• Presidential Election 2016: The Lessons of 1968
• The President’s Nuclear “Deal” with Congress [about Iran]
• Repentance
• Roberts Court Upholds Obamacare’s Subsidies
• Thank you, Mr. President! (An open letter) [5/15]
• Thanksgiving 2015
• The TPP Debacle
• The Vindication of Same-Sex Marriage, and the Chief Justice’s Cautionary Note
• What is “Nazism”?
• The World’s Most Dangerous Man [Putin]
• Why the TPP’s “Pay for Rules” Provision Must Go

  2014
• Attorney General Holder: A Good Man Leaving
• The Awful Arithmetic of Citizens United
• Big Questions Tuesday [Pre-Midterms-2014 Forecast]
• A Chasm of Misunderstanding: Thoughts on Opening Day at Sochi
• Coercive Capitalism [and raising the minimum wage]
• Demonic Yankee Cynicism
• Engineering America: Making Things Work Again
• Frontline on Iraq: Feeding Yankee Paranoia
• How our Eleven Big Yankee Problems Still Fester
• How a Republican Senate Takeover Could Hurt Your Health, Literally
• Human Perfectibility and Social Engineering: Candide, Yellen and the Pope
• Iraq: a Western Chimera
• Is Christie Toast?
• It’s Character, Stupid! [that’s killing our country]
• Janet Yellen: Yankee Philosopher Queen
• Confirmation: John Cornyn and His Big Lie
• At Last the President Leads [on Immigration]
• The Lesson of Ebola
• [The Lessons of] Midterms 2014
• November 2014
• Our Species: Which Leaders? (A Visual Essay)
• Please Don’t Run Now, Elizabeth! (An Open Letter)
• Potatoes and Birds [or how pols differ]
• Proving Dratler’s Law
• Racism and Excessive Force
• The Reactionary Party
• Simplicity and “Obamacare”
• A Snide Slander [of Pete Seeger] Unbefitting an Economist
• The Sorry State of our Union [in 1/2014]
• Tax Phobia
• Three Global Threats to Democracy [no term limits, leaders who won’t leave, and propaganda]
• Tribalism
• Was Orwell Right?
• Why “Obamacare” Is Failing, and How to Make It Work
• The Woody Allen Test [failing to vote]

  2013
• A Conspiracy of Silence? [About Tea Party’s Deep-South Origins]
• Addendum on Margaret Thatcher, An Unlikely Alpha Male
• Of Apes and Men
• Breaking the Nuclear Taboo: Another Risk of Iran Going Nuclear
• Can Justice do justice [in holding bankers accountable]?
• The Continuing Subversion of “Frontline”
• Copyright, Globalization, and the New Roberts Court
• Doing Exactly the Wrong Thing [John Boehner]
• Fear and Age [as Causes of the GOP’s Decline]
• Financial Stampedes: Positive Feedback inside the “Invisible Hand”
• Hillary 2016
• House Tea-Party Roster by Region
• How the Bankers Got Away, and How to Stop Them Next Time
• How Karl Rove and Frank Luntz Destroyed the Republican Party
• Is Chicken Little Wrong? [The economics of default brinksmanship]
• Jeff Bezos and the Pope
• John McCain (and Arizona) at the Crossroads
• Coda: Journalistic Malpractice [re the “Fiscal Cliff”]
• Know Thy Extortionists [Tea Party as Old South revival]
• Let Them Go! The Case for Secession
• Lloyd Blankfein, Bashar Al-Assad, and the Pope
• The Marathon Bombers: Alpha Males Lost in Modern Civilization?
• Motivation and the “Fiscal Cliff”
• A Non-Violent Coup d’Etat [The theft of our democracy by procedural tricks]
• North Korea: A Test of Emotional Intelligence
• Not Even a Fig Leaf [for John Boehner]
• Our Big Foreign-Policy Blunders, and our New Opportunities
• Our Global Moral Crisis
• Our Own Jackie Robinson
• Parsing Iran’s Goals and Intentions
• Addendum: The Party of “No” Goes Garden Trampling<
• The Physics-Economics of Solar Panels
• Playing Chess with Putin, Syria and Iran
• Positive Global-Warming Feedback
• The President’s Climate-Survival Speech: An Adult in a Marvel-Comix Culture
• The President’s Second Inaugural
• A Prose Ode to Female Leaders
• P.S. Propaganda, Argument and Fact
• Update: Psychopaths in Congress
• Selfishness is Not a Plan
• Real Incentives for Private Job Creation
• A Real Solution? Not Yet! [after avoiding default]
• Six Things our President and Every Other High Executive Should Know about Websites [re healthcare.gov]
• Speak to Us, Mr. President! (An Open Letter to our Chief Executive)
• Strange Sympathies [for Islamists in Egypt]
• Syria: Don’t Do it, Mr. President! [re punitive strike for chemical-weapons use]
• Thanksgiving Message
• The Trouble with Filibusters
• “Unconditional Surrender” [John Boehner’s]
• What Broke our Democracy
• Who is Islam’s Best Friend?
• Why the “Defense of Marriage” Act is Inhuman, not Just Inhumane
• Why New Jersey (and lately NYC) [rebel against partisan gridlock]?
• Why Our Pentagon Must Slim Down
• Why the President Must Stand Firm [on minority rule and default]
• The Zimmerman Matter

  2012
• A Dozen Reasons to Reject Mitt
• The Big Lie about Wind and Solar Power
• Breaking Bankers’ Death Grip on Our Global Economy
• Can the “Bums” Win Again?
• Can Obama Fight?
• Chief Justice Roberts on “Obamacare”
• The “Chutzpah” Campaign and How to Beat It
• Coal: Faust’s Fate Come to Life
• Colin Powell’s Endorsement [of President Obama]
• Consequences [of Going over the so-called “Fiscal Cliff”]
• Consequences of Mitt Winning
• The Democrats’ [Convention] First Day
• Don’t [to American Voters in 2012 Elections]
• Denying Reality, or Why the GOP’s Internal Reform Will Take Some Time
• Eleven Questions for All Presidential Candidates
• “Fiscal Cliff” or Briar Patch?
• Foreign Affairs: They Matter Much More Than You Think
• France and Germany versus the [American] Psychopaths
• The Gang’s New Capo
• GDP for Obama II, and Who’s Really a “Taker”
• Genocide in Arabia
• The GOP’s Five Big Lies
• Germany and America I
• Germany and America II: Could it Happen Here?
• Germany and America III: Following Jesus’ Advice
• The Great Salesman: Music and Words [Mitt in First Debate]
• Graphical Extrapolation of Gasoline Prices: Six or Seven Dollars a Gallon in Ten Years
• The Great Salesman [Mitt Romney] Strikes Again
• Has PBS Turned to the Dark Side?
• Heroism in Libya [Coda]
• How to Make Solar Power Seem Expensive When it Isn’t
• How Near-Term Energy Policy Could Make or Break Us
• Huntsman at State?
• Huntsman v. Romney [2012]
• Joe Klein, Watching Fox, and the Civil War’s Final End
• Keystone: An Engineering and Economic Atrocity
• The Libya Kerfluffle [in the 2012 campaign]
• Looking for God in a Godless World
• “The Messiah’s” Burden
• Method in His Madness
• Mitt, King of Gaffes
• Mitt’s War Risk
• My Dozen Tweets
• No-Bluff Obama
• A Noose for America’s Middle Class
• Obama and Romney: A Handy Comparison Chart
• “Old Europe”
• Paul Ryan as Sidekick: What It Means
• The Perfect Dupes
• The President’s Recess Appointments
• Signs of a Sick Democracy: the First New Hampshire “Debate”
• Succession and Selection of Leaders [in China and the US]
• Susan Rice at State
• Thanksgiving Message 2012: A Baker’s Dozen Reasons to be Thankful
• Thank You, Iowa, and Hello Huntsman
• “That Vision Thing”
• Two Gathering Storms
• Vice President Huntsman?
• The Vice-Presidential Debate
• Working Together
• Why the [Presidents’s First] Debate Flub?
• Why I Topped Up My Contribution to the President Today (8/31/12)
• Why Mitt Lost
• Why Mitt Will Win and Lose
• Why Romney Would Make a Bad President
• Worst-Case Mitt
• Yes, He Can! [Obama, debate]

  2011
• America’s Two Crises [Default and Murdoch]
• The Arab Spring, Ten Months In
• Can Europe Help Save Us?
• Can Markets Be Wrong?
• Capitalism Isn’t Broken; Wall Street Is
• Capitalism on Trial [in Libya]
• The Casinos Won, so Buckle Your Seat Belts
• Changing America, Starting with Dixie
• Commodities Today: How to Make a Bad Situation Much, Much Worse
• Common Sense About Pakistan
• “Daddy! Mommy! I want more oil!”
• The Deal [Avoiding Debt-Default, 2011]
• To Default, or Not to Default: The Political Angle
• The Die is Cast [on Mission to Kill Bin Laden]
• Dexia = AIG Redux, or Einstein’s Definition of Insanity
• The Double-Dip Scenario
• Elizabeth Is Running!
• Ending the Not-War War
• Europe’s New Bailout Plan
• Excising our Metastatic Cancer of Finance: Temporary Market-Based Nationalization
• Flirting with the Devil [and a US Default]
• Further Signs of Greatness
• Gang Rule, or Government by Extortion
• Gripping Political Theater [in Debt-Default Endgame]
• High Noon on PBS [Lehrer Interviews McConnell]
• Hillary Clinton’s First Big Test
• How Rick Santelli Killed the Housing Rescue
• Islamophobia: Three Lies
• Jon Huntsman: A Good Man Ignored
• Krugman, Reason and Culture [and their Effects on National Default]
• Mad Money Men Mayhem
• The Manhattan Dragon and Sir Cyrus of Vance
• The McCain/Obama Rapprochement
• Mitch’s Desperate Gambit [to Prevent Default]
• The New Royalists (and the New Guillotines)
• “Occupy Wall Street” Movement: Initial Information
• One of Us
• Ordinary People Matter
• Our Banks, Our Media, Oil and War
• Our Ten Grave National Problems: How Long Have they Festered?
• Pakistan: A New Policy
• Party of Extremists
• In Praise of Gates
• The Proper Response [to Near-Shutdown of Government] is Rage
• Run, Elizabeth [Warren], Run!
• Sample E-Mail to Your Representatives in Congress [re Debt Default]
• The “Second-Amendment Solution”
• A Second Great Depression
• Snap!
• State of the Union [2011]
• Teaching the Retarded [about the GOP's Real Goals]
• Thinking Outside the Box: A Zero Capital-Gains Tax
• The Traps Our Founders Foresaw (that We Fell In)
• Twelve Republican Stupidities [in Debt-Reduction Extortion]
• Two Things You Can Do Right Now to Help Save America
• Underestimating the Task and the President (or Krugman At It Again)
• Us Against Them
• Vital Numbers
• Watching the Sun Set [on the American Century]
• Why An American Jew Supports Palestinian Statehood
• Why Do We Need Armed Forces?
• Why Obama Should Win (and Why I’m Donating Again)
• Why Obama Will Win Again (and Why I’m No Longer Donating)
• Zucotti Park, or the Power of Numbers

  2010
• And you thought government was bad!
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• Conservation of Money, or Why the Fed Should Manage Derivatives
• Coussoule and Boehner, A Comparison
• A Critical Year End
• “The Defiant Ones”
• A Dozen Reasons for House Members to Vote for Health-Insurance Reform
• All Hail the Speaker!
• Dystopia
• Faux Democracy
• The First Big Mistake
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• Four Dollars a Gallon by Next Summer
• Grover Norquist’s World: Indentured Servitude for Youth
• In Bed with Boehner [On Summers and Geithner]
• “Intelligent Design” and Engineering: A Tale of Orwellian Word Theft
• Is Facebook Doing Us In?
• It’s the Bystanders, Stupid!
• “I’ve Got Mine, Jack!”: The American Recipe for Dystopia
• The Morning After [Health Insurance Reform]
• Midterm Aftermath: Diagnosis and Prognosis
• Mr. Reid, Back Down!
• “Neglecting the Base,” or the Meaning of “We”
• An Open Letter to the President [re Tax Cuts]
• Our New Long, Twilight Struggle
• Reds on the Right
• Our Republican Platform (Pledge to America)
• Outrage! (The Shirley Sherrod Story)
• The SEC’s Suit against Goldman, Sachs: What it Means
• A Sense of Perspective
• Stalin in America? [comparing Boehner]
• The Summers/Geithner Team: Obama’s McNamara or Rumsfeld?
• Tax Cuts for the Rich: A Disastrous Blunder
• Tax Cuts for the Rich and DADT: Two Litmus Tests
• Ten Reasons to Vote Democratic in 2010
• The “Texas Question” Answered
• Think!—A Voter’s Guide for 2010
• Two Sentences that Could Save Our Republic
• Working Quietly and Well
• Young People, Please Save Us (and Yourselves) Again!
• You’ve Got to Know Something

  2009
• An American Soap Opera
• Bankers
• Big Tobacco’s Just Deserts
• Bob Herbert on Racism and Hatred in Politics
• Bonus Lessons
• California’s EPA Waiver
• China Rising III: America and China in Crisis
• Creative Destruction
• The Curious Case of Tom Daschle
• Cutting Our New President Some Slack
• A Day to Cherish
• A Double Dip?
• Early Dog Days
• The End of an Era
• Fear, Delusion and Their Antidote
• Five Economic Lies
• Geithner’s Outline Gets “D” for Accountability
• Getting Smart
• Health-Insurance Basics
• Health-Insurance Quid Pro Quo
• Health-Insurance Reform on its Deathbed
• Health Insurance That Isn’t
• Infrastructure, Industrial Policy, and Economic Recovery
• Independence Day
• John Boehner
• Judge Sotomayor and “Identity Politics”
• Keeping Our Eyes on the Ball
• A Maginot Line for Missiles
• Message for the Gang of Six and the Blue Dogs
• Military Secrecy: Still Useful after All These Years
• Nervous Nellies
• The Obama “Referendum”
• Obama’s Blueprint for Tomorrow
• Obama’s Velvet Glove
• Our Still Dysfunctional Congress
• Perseverance
• The President’s Bow
• The Public Option
• Putting a Price on Obstructionism
• The President’s Speech
• Recovery by the Numbers
• Rotten Business
• Sarah and Sonia: A Post-Fourth Note
• A Super Special Prosecutor
• Should Geitner Go?
• Time to Twist Arms
• Timing is Everything [in Afghanistan]
• To Do Or Not To Do
• Universal Economic Education: Wising Up
• U.S. Industrial Policy: “Cash for Clunkers” and Cap & Trade
• Van Jones
• Virtue
• War Against War
• What To Do About Joe
• “When Donkeys Fly": Steven Chu’s Energy Plans

  2008
• Abortion
• 9/11 After Seven
• Acting Like Adults
• Al Gore’s Energy Challenge
• The Alpha Tribe
• Another Red State, and What a Victory!
• Anti-Deficiency Laws and our Mortgage Crisis
• Back to the Future
• The Bailout Act, Amended
• A Baker’s Dozen Reasons Why Obama is Best
• The Banality of Evil
• Barack Obama’s Good Weekend and Sterling Endorsements
• Best is Best
• Bitter
• The Candidates’ Energy Plans I
• Carter and Hamas
• A Clean, Fair and Honest Campaign
• The Cleveland Debate
• The Clinton-Krugman Health-Care Swindle
• Clinton and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Compare Character
• Comparing Obama: Three Essential Readings
• Crunch Time in the Caucasus
• The Dangerous Illusion of “Clean Coal”
• Democrats for McCain?
• The Dilbert Effect, or Don’t Knock Hope
• Do We Look Stupid? [About the Economy]
• Double Crossers [The Clintons]
• Energy Policy: Good Batteries and How to Get Them
• Energy Policy: A Matter of Planning
• Facts for Last-Minute Deciders
• Fear Itself
• The Fighter Pilot
• The First 200 Days: Fourteen Priorities
• Follow the Light!
• Four Myths that Need Debunking
• Frat Boy II
• GDP for Obama
• Goodbye, Hillary!
• Gossip and Policy
• The Great Debate
• He Did His Homework [Tim Russert]
• Hillary Clinton: A Bad Idea Then, a Bad Idea Now
• Hillary Not Reading the NIE
• Hillary-ous Economics
• Hillary’s Exit
• Hillary’s Last Stand
• In Myths and Rumors Credimus
• How the Dow’s Drop May Save Us
• How Republican Ideology Destroyed America’s Competitiveness
  and Sapped Her Strength
• Identity Politics and the Powell Parable
• Ideological Mirror Images and Olympic Lessons
• Immigrants, Alpha Males, and America’s Three Cultures
• Inaccurate
• Innumeracy, Economics and the Great Accommodation
• Iraq and November [2008]
• Iraq and Our Elections
• Irony to the Max
• Joe Biden
• Krugman the Authoritarian
• Lack of Imagination II: Making the Volt Succeed
• Leading is Taking People Where they Wouldn’t Otherwise Go
• Lessons from "Honor" Killings in Germany
• Little Things Mean a Lot [Obama’s First News Conference]
• Luffing Time
• Mars, Venus and Presidential Politics
• McCain and Obama: A Handy Comparison Chart
• Meritocracy Restored
• Michelle’s American Story
• A New Environmental Vision
• Nixon and Bush in Female Form?
• A Note on Campaign Financing
• Nothing Has Changed
• Now Let’s See Tough
• Obama’s Energy Mistake
• Obama’s Meritocracy
• An Obama Reading List
• Obama’s Sense of Perspective
• Obama’s Speech on Race
• Obama’s Strategic Vision
• That Old Alpha Thing, or Why Obama Might Lose
• An Open Appeal to Edwards Voters
• Paul Krugman’s Nobel Prize
• Paulson’s Latest Egg
• Pennsylvania
• The Philadelphia “Debate”
• Prejudice and Pride
• Putin’s Dangerous Game
• Revolt of the Experts
• The Real Hillary
• Response to CJCalgirl
• The Reverend Jeremiah Wright
• Revolt of the Experts
• Sarah Palin
• Sarah Palin II: The Demise of American Democracy?
• Saving the Big Three [Car Makers]
• Senator Clinton, Please Step Aside!
• Seven Questions for Sarah Palin Fans
• The Sizzle and the Steak
• A Solution to Our Energy Crisis: The Chevy Volt
• Soothing: The Last Debate
• The Texas Debate
• Time to Show Those Brains
• Tired of Lies
• The Thing that Dares Not Speak its Name
• Think, Pennsylvania!
• Think People, Not Ideas
• Trade, Economics and Ancient Rome
• The Transcendent Need for Real Talent at State
• Tough
• Twenty Reasons to Vote Democratic in 2008
• Virtue
• What's Happened to Bill?
• Where are the Adults?
• Who Can Keep Us Safe?
• Who Can Win? Obama Takes the Heartland and the South
• Winning Red States
• Why Hillary is Dangerous I: Foreign and Military Policy
• Why Hillary is Dangerous II: Pandering
• Why I Gave Obama Another $2,300
• Why Judgment Matters
• Why McCain’s Foreclosure “Rescue” Won’t Work, and What Will
• Why the New $800 Billion Bailout is a Non-Starter
• Why Obama? An Appeal to Older Voters
• Yes, We Did!
• Young People, Save Us (and Yourselves)!

  2007
• Ahmadinejad Speaks?
• Arrogance and Humility
• The Bancrofts’ Big Decision
• Barack Obama's "Inexperience"
• The Bill Factor
• Bye, Bye Boomers
• Campaign Math 101
• A Chance for Success in Baghdad?
• Clintonian heresy
• Common Sense and Iran
• The Demise of Honor
• The Dems' Fatal Mistake?
• Dishonesty and Stupidity
• Don’t be Fooled by Name Dropping
• Dream Team
• Energy Independence: The Proper Role of Coal
• Five Questions for Vetting Candidates
• Footnote: the Libby Commutation
• A Forty Year Dry Spell
• Gleams, Boos and Historical Inevitability
• Hillary Clinton: Follower or Leader?
• If Barack and Hillary Were White Males
• Impeach Gonzales Now
• Invest in America [in Obama’s Campaign]
• Iraq’s Future
• Iraq’s Last Chance
• Is Hillary Dangerous?
• It’s Obama!
• Just Like a Man
• Karl Rove, Republican Destroyer
• Killed for a Photo Op
• Krugman Redux
• Last Night’s Democratic Debate
• Lightweights and Heavyweights
• A Mini Marshall Plan for Shiite Iraq
• More on Impeaching Gonzales
• More on Iraq’s Future
• A Necessary Heresy
• Nixon, Bush, and Scientific Demagoguery
• Obama’s and Clinton’s Health-Care Plans
• Obama's Health-Care Plan [May 2007]
• Obama and Evangelicals
• Obama’s Terrorism Speech
• Obama's Touch of Greatness
• One-Man Rule
• An Open Letter to Republicans in Congress
• Putin, Zubkov, and Their Lessons for Us
• A Real Benchmark for Leaving Iraq
• A Salute to Senator Lugar
• Search-and-Seizure Heresy
• Senator Clinton's Plan
• Senator Clinton's Political Epitaph
• Senator Obama: Please Fire the Idiots Now!
• Smarter People, Better Results
• Taking Our Worst Enemy Seriously
• A Tale of Honor and Government by Clique
• Ten Reasons to Back Barack
• Vote your Hearts, Iowa!
• What Politicians Do When Reality Intervenes
• What to Do About Obama's Brains
• Who can Win?
• Why Hawks Should Cheer the Antiwar Left
• Why We Can't Get Rid of Bush (humor)

  2006
• The 50.1 Percent Man
• Barack Obama and Colin Powell
• Benching the Star Quarterback [Colin Powell]
• A Dozen Reasons to Vote Democratic
• Law and Justice
• Lieutenant Ehren Watada
• The Lone Star Nation
• Oversight
• Playing into Bush's Hands
• The Rumsfeld Memo

  2005
• Civilian Control of the Military: Oversight or
  Micromanagement?
• The Decline of Competence in America
• Harriet Miers: Thinking Like Mush
• Judge Roberts: A Man for the Times?
• The NCAA and Native Mascots: A Question of Empathy
• An Open Letter to Colin Powell
• An Opportunity for Democrats
• Our War in the Shadows: Can we Succeed by Withdrawing?
• Plague Bioterrorism: A Sui-Genocide Bomb
• The President's Unauthorized, Secret Spying: A Constitutional Crisis
• Rumsfeld Must Go
• A Tale of Two Cities

  2004
• 2007
• Father Knows Best, or Does He?
• Intelligence Does Matter
• Why Bush Won

  2003 and before
• Cicero, McCain and Feingold

Race and Racism

• Acting Like Adults
• The Awful Arithmetic of Citizens United
• Bernie and “Black” Votes
• Bernie’s Moment, and His Test
• Black Lives Matter: The White Pledge
• Bob Herbert on Racism and Hatred in Politics
• Bossism and Racism by the Numbers
• The Charleston Massacre
• Curing Racism by Teaching Tolerance in our Schools
• A Day to Cherish
• Defending the Indefensible [The adversary system moving beyond its Peter Principle]
• “The Defiant Ones”
• The Delayed Transition at Justice [Eric Holder’s Departure]
• Double Crossers [the Clintons]
• Fork ‘em, Mr. President!
• How Karl Rove and Frank Luntz Destroyed the Republican Party
• If Barack and Hillary Were White Males
• Identity Politics and the Powell Parable
• Islamophobia: Three Lies
• Julian Bond
• Learning to Love Logic
• Martin and Bernie
• Meritocracy Restored
• Michelle’s American Story
• The NCAA and Native Mascots: A Question of Empathy
• “Neglecting the Base,” or the Meaning of “We”
• Nothing Has Changed
• Obama’s Speech on Race
• One of Us
• Our Own Jackie Robinson
• Outrage! (The Shirley Sherrod Story)
• Perseverance
• Prejudice and Pride
• The President’s Second Inaugural
• Prince Ea
• Racism and Excessive Force
• Racism versus Self-Preservation
• Random Thoughts on Race in America
• The Reverend Jeremiah Wright
• Sarah and Sonia: A Post-Fourth Note
• Tax Cuts for the Rich and DADT: Two Litmus Tests
• A Terrible Price [we’ve paid for racism]
• The Thing that Dares Not Speak its Name
• Van Jones
• Tribalism
• Virtue
• Yes, We Did!
• Three Gates

Texas

• Let Them Go! The Case for Secession
• The Lone Star Nation
• The “Texas Question” Answered

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