“The main reason we are losing in Afghanistan is not because there are too few American soldiers, but because there are not enough Afghans ready to fight and die for the kind of government we want.”
Let’s coin some alternatives. “The main reason al-Qaeda is losing in America is not because there are too few terrorists, […]

The worst national security administration ever has a hideous record of ministering to combat troops returning home with psychiatric issues. The military have been slow to recognize and treat post-traumatic stress disorder, and have returned soldiers to combat without treatment. The suicide rate for soldiers who are serving or have served in Afghanistan and Iraq […]

One of the most unfair aspects of George W. Bush’s foreign policy disasters, not counting the literally millions of people who have been killed, maimed or driven from their homes in direct consequence — we’re not counting them because, let’s face it, for Americans they don’t count — is that he won’t suffer any repercussions […]

Player Piano, by Kurt Vonnegut
The Space Merchants, by Frederik Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth
This month’s selection is a pair of books that plot out future American dystopias as envisioned in 1952. I think it’s an interesting time, in that even in heyday of the American capitalist mythology, a few authors were still frustrated enough […]

The frothing radical right thinks the New York Times is the frothing radical left, as if such a thing exists in this country in this day, but this is a newspaper that doesn’t speak truth to power even when the power is itself, even after the lights are out, even in the sound-proofed panic room […]

A new poll in the New York Times shows that Barack Obama has inexplicably failed to erase the legacies of slavery in the United States, and further, that he has consistently failed to turn concentrated sulpheric acid into a decent cabernet. Analysts are stunned by this new evidence that Obama is at best a demigod […]

John McCain said in a Thursday interview with the Kansas City Star that Barack Obama is politically to the left of Vermont’s socialist senator, Bernie Sanders. Presumably McCain was referring to the National Journal rankings, which named Obama the most liberal senator based upon his sporadic votes—he missed 35% of them—in 2007.
Even the National […]

The Sacramento Bee asks the headlined question and answers, unsurprisingly, “Yes.” Other news outlets have reported the increasing use of criminal history waivers by the Army and the Army National Guard as recruiting became one of the casualties of the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, but the Bee is the first to connect the […]

By “nick,” we mean something along the lines of the Grand Canyon or Marianas Trench. It is a nick into which millions of erstwhile homeowners, along with millions more investors—but no policy makers, so far—have tumbled with barely a trace, unless you count the recession they’re leaving in their wake.
As BTC News more or less […]

Among the trophy and sporting photos in the December/January issue of Outdoor Life is one showing a pair of US Border Patrol agents rappelling down a boulder-strewn slope. The photo is part of a recruiting ad for the Department of Homeland Security’s US Customs and Border Protection arm, and it was spotted by one of […]