Titus North for Congress

It seems to me that the uprising in Egypt is a genuine one, and not "color revolution" orchestrated from outside. While there is a superficial resemblance in that Egyptians are using social media to organize, the color revolutions in Ukraine, Georgia, Lebanon, and elsewhere replaced existing governments with new ones that were more pro-American and dependent on the West. This time, it looks like the Egyptian masses have applied the tactics of the color revolutions to their own very different objectives.

Among the more baldfaced lies being spewed in the media by Israeli officials in recent days is that their military had the right under international law to board American, Turkish, and other vessels on which they killed nine Turkish and American aid workers.

Just for the record, had I been in Congress I would have voted AGAINST the bill. The bulk of the debate was divorced from reality (i.e. it is not "a government take-over" nor does it "provide coverage to 30 million" unless by "provide" you mean force people to buy what they will not be able to afford to use. And the 30 million number is just a guess). The bill consisted of a variety of health insurance industry counter-proposals to genuine national health insurance proposals put forward over the past 40 years.

The health care "reform" bills being pushed by the Democrats in the Senate and the House will not only make things worse, but they will postpone by years any real solution to our deteriorating health care system. If I were in Congress, I would work to defeat the bills. I have long supported a single-payer system that will eliminate the massive waste, administrative redundancy, fraud, and greed of the private insurance industry. I have experienced the Japanese single-payer system, which does a much better job of delivering services at a far lower cost than the American system.

Night Two at Pitt

Day One in Lawrenceville

(June 14, 2009) The "disputed" election in Iran and the "major policy address" by Israeli PM Netenyahu dominated the headlines this weekend, and neither portend well for the immediate future in the Middle East. I must admit that I become suspicious about the report I heard on the BBC last week about a surge in the popularity of President Ahmadinejad's main rival according to a poll reportedly conducted by the Iranian government itself. The BBC did not describe the polling method or give any other details.

In 1971 Richard Nixon famously proclaimed that "we are all Keynesians now." That statement was made in the context of a slowing economy, and Nixon, believing that a recession was responsible for his razor-thin loss to John Kennedy in the 1960 election, was ready to give up his traditional fiscal conservatism and engage in deficit spending in order to boost the economy and improve his re-election chances the following year. Ironically, by 1971 true Keynesianism was already dead in the United States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEsohIRQYW8