Thing is, what North Korea is doing looks perfectly rational to me. If you know hostile nations are committed to your destruction – and have the recently proven capacity and willingness to do so – see Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya – why wouldn’t you get the most powerful weapon possible and try to credibly threaten […]

My heart goes out to all of the victims of the attack in Barcelona. I am saddened to see yet another terrorist attack. These people did not deserve to die. All of these words seem so inadequate, just as they do after every terrorist attack. I often don’t know what to write after these events, […]

I’ll admit that I’ve been taking advantage of my physical distance from the US to avoid the tragedy in Charlottesville and tend to personal matters. But it’s time for some reactions: One – The car attack was an act of terrorism, plain and simple. (Just like the left-wing attack on Republicans in Washington was.) In […]

This post – “Why libertarians should read Marx” – by Chris Dillow (h/t to Mark Thoma) is a good read. Every “tribe” has its totems, and supposedly the left has Marx, which automatically means that the right must dismiss him out of hand. But that’s ridiculous, as Dillow points out. I’ve encountered this on the […]

From the Straits Times this morning: Twenty years after the U.K. handed Hong Kong back to the People’s Republic of China, the city is on its way to becoming just another Chinese city, with all of the same level of freedoms – or lack thereof. While this might seem to be mostly of interest to the […]

Illinois is the state where I have spent more of my adult life than any other. I went to grad school there. We’re still connected to there through my wife’s employment. My children’s first memories of “home” are there. We’re bound to return there someday. And it’s a complete mess. From the Wall Street Journal: […]

This article in the American Prospect is correct: Republicans do lie about health care reform for the most part. Let me expand on one item, though. He uses Palin’s “death panels” as an example of a lie. For sure, as she and other Republicans spun it, it was. I won’t repeat the lie here, but […]

Interesting read from Vox: Even though they are both parts of the Affordable Care Act, people seem to be drawing a distinction between the Medicaid expansion and “Obamacare”. Medicaid is popular, while “Obamacare” is not. As the article points out, that’s leading Republicans to try to focus on “Obamacare”, while trying to distract from the […]

Riding in a taxi today in Singapore, the cabbie brought up Pres. Trump and asked me what I thought. Before I could answer he told me that he liked him, and I got the sense he didn’t know what to think of all he was hearing about the Trump administration lately. He wasn’t unusual. In […]

Here’s an excellent analysis of the story about Pres. Trump revealing sensitive intelligence information to Russian representatives, at least as it’s currently reported. This story is coming from an anonymous source (though at least three outlets have confirmed it), and we might learn more as we go along. I think the fourth point is especially […]